Proverbs 28:24 Commentary and Bible Study

The fifth commandment elevates the special relationship which every one of us has with our own parents because of the way that God has ordained that we come into this world. He gives them a heavy responsibility and an instinct to nurture their children as dependents for many years before they can handle life on their own without parental support. For this, gratitude is due and is to be expressed in the form of honour, a broad word which includes protection of their good name, the expression of thanks in words and deeds, and provision for their needs when they in turn become dependants in old age. There are many other relationships we have in the world but initially, before marriage, none of them is as important as this. It is a relationship in which the child must hold the parent in high regard and defend their honour before the world. The child has received so many free gifts from the parent at a time when their need was greatest, that they have a debt which is impossible to fully repay. What is then the ingratitude, the monstrous wickedness of a child that not only fails to repay this debt, but who acts in this iniquitous way towards their father or mother? Though they have received an immeasurable amount freely, and though the parents’ hearts have never withheld what was needed, the wicked child is ready to use deceit to take, as if from an enemy. But what is meant by the words, ‘It is no transgression’? The child appears to be saying, it is not possible for me to steal from you, my father or my mother, because all that you have is to be given to me without question. The wickedness here is that of gross ingratitude, in treating the parent as a mere source of things, in refusing to acknowledge the generosity of the parent, in not distinguishing between what is given freely and what is kept back, as if the parent no longer has private property and exists only to supply the selfish child. ‘It is no transgression because I am entitled to anything I like.’ It is the same attitude as the prodigal son who wanted the inheritance and wished his father dead already.Such a person ‘is a companion of a man of destruction.’ He would be in fitting company with such a person. He is no better than a destroyer because the parent child relationship is a beautiful and noble relationship with much love and affection, and he has reduced it to a mere one-way channel of goods. His father or his mother have become nothing in his eyes; they scarcely exist as people.