“ ‘Each one of you shall respect his mother and his father. You shall keep my Sabbaths. I am Yahweh your God.
To revere one's father and mother
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
אִישׁ אִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו תִּירָאוּ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לירא מאב ואם, והוא שיתנהג עמהם כמנהג מי שהוא ירא ממנו שיענישהו כמו המלך, וילך עמהם כדרך שילך עם מי שמפחד ממנו וירא מהגיע לו ממנו מה שימאס. והוא אמרו יתעלה איש אמו ואביו תיראו. ולשון סיפרא איזהו מורא לא יושב במקומו ולא מדבר בפניו ולא סותר את דבריו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת קדושין. (קדושים תהיו, הלכות ממרים פרק ו'):
That is that He commanded us to fear [our] father and mother - and that is that one behave with them according to what is customary towards one whom he fears, such as a king. And he should be with them like one who is afraid of them and beware of something coming from himself that will be untoward. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "A man shall fear his mother and father" (Leviticus 19:3). And the language of the Sifra (Sifra, Kedoshim, Section 1:10) is, "Which is fear? He shall not sit in his place, and he shall not speak in front of him, and he shall not contradict his words." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Kiddushin. (See Parashat Kedoshim; Mishneh Torah, Rebels 6.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Pesikta Rabbati 23/24 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Decalogo 165-167 rationalized it
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.225-227 rationalized it
Josephus
- Contra Apionem 2.206 affirmed it
The New Testament
- Ephesians 6:1-3 affirmed it Cites the Decalogue honor command (Exod 20:12) as 'the first commandment with a promise'; reverence/honor framework retained
- Mark 7:9-13 affirmed it Jesus upholds the parental-honor obligation (citing Exod 20:12/Deut 5:16) while polemicizing against the korban vow that would nullify it, charging that the tradition voids the command
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 17:23-24 carried a parallel
- Q 31:14 carried a parallel
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi CH §195 prescribes cutting off the hand of a son who strikes his father; §§192–193 address a foster-child who repudiates the adoptive parent; these penalties for filial disobedience reflect the same ANE legal valuation of parental authority that Lev 19:3 addresses Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§192–193, 195 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Scholars Press, 1997)
- instruction of amenemope Amenemope emphasizes respect for elders and parents as a foundational wisdom virtue; the Egyptian sapiential tradition of filial reverence provides a comparative ANE context for the Levitical command to 'fear' one's parents Relationship to the parallel: shared theme general sapiential framework (esp. concluding chapters on conduct and respect) Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. II (UC Press, 1976), pp. 146-163
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.