Commentaire de citation sur Le Deutéronome 5:16

למען תחזקו ”in order that you be strong;” Moses does not tell the people to observe G–d’s laws in order that they will become strong (physically), for if that were the reason they would be fulfilling the Torah for the sake of the reward in store for them. This is not the proper motive. (Compare Ethics of our fathers chapter 1, mishnah 3) The interpretation of this line is as follows: “perform the commandments out of a feeling of love for the Lord.” The word למען, here does not mean: “in order that,” just as it does not mean “in order that” in verse 21 of our chapter where we read: למען יאריכון ימיך, in the Ten Commandments in chapter 5,16. It means that the reason you must be strong is in order that you can fulfill the commandment required of you. The word is not linked to what follows, but describes a requisite for successful performance of the Torah being not fear of G–d but love of G–d.

Honor your father. Included within this is the obligation to honor Hashem, one’s true Father, and according to the Sages (Kesubos 103a), one’s older brother. It also includes honoring Torah scholars, who are like fathers to their disciples, heeding the prophets, showing respect to the elderly and obeying the Sanhedrin. The purpose of this mitzvah is to bolster faith in tradition by honoring its bearers. That is why it is listed on the first Tablet along with the commandments between man and God. So that your days may be lengthened. This is in recompense for his good deed towards his forebears. Alternatively, it is to enable his own children to honor him, measure for measure; therefore when this commandment is repeated in Devarim (5:16) the Torah adds, “in order that it will be good for you” (Abarbanel).

כבד את אביך ואת אמך, “Honour your father and your mother.” After G’d had completed the list of duties we have vis a vis Him, He begins a list of primary obligations we have concerning our fellow man. He begins the list with an obligation to honour one’s biological father, as the father is G’d’s partner in the creation of any new human life. Whereas Hashem is mankind’s original father, the biological father is his final, most recent father. It follows that just as G’d commanded us in His capacity as our Creator, our father is entitled to a commensurate degree of honour and respect, as he fulfilled this role on earth. [It goes without saying that man’s mother is the third partner in the creation of every human being after the first pair of humans. Ed.] The Torah does not go into specifics of how such respect is to be shown to one’s parents. A major component of such honour accorded to one’s father is to publicly acknowledge him as such, just as the basic honour we accord G’d is that we publicly acknowledge Him as the Creator. We must not accord similar honour to other males in order to be recognized as the heirs of another male, for instance, for the sake of reaping some other benefit by such recognition of someone who is not our biological father as such. If one swears by the life of one’s father, one must not portray someone else as one’s father, for instance. Our sages have furnished us with a list of other activities the performance of which is considered proof of our observing this commandment. Our sages, in stressing the importance of this commandment, have compared the parents’ claim to be honoured by their children to G’d’s claim to be honoured by His creatures. They derive this, for instance, from the use of the attribute Hashem in this commandment, an attribute which does not occur during any of the last five Commandments, the reason being that those concern inter-personal relations, not man’s relations with his Creator. Seeing that in essence, the performance of the commandment to honour one’s parents concerns itself with issues of relevance in our lives on this earth, the Torah, in its promise of reward also describes this reward in terms of advantages to be enjoyed in our life on this earth, i.e. long life in the land of our forefathers. Our sages say that the promise of the reward is to be divided into two separate promises. 1) Long life; 1a) life in the land of Israel. These two aspects of the reward speak about the terrestrial world, whereas 2) the word יאריכון in itself speaks of a domain in which time is unlimited, the world to come in the celestial regions in the words of the sages: בעולם שכולו ארוך, a world which is not bound by time. Moses elaborates on this further in Deuteronomy 5,16 by adding the words ולמען ייטב לך, “and in order that it will be good for you.” Seeing that there was no obvious need to append the letter ן in the word יאריכו, our commentators see in this a hint that the mother is included in all that is written here.