What Does Deuteronomy 5:16 Mean?

Give weight to your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that your days may be lengthened, and so that it may be good for you, in the land that the LORD your God gives you.

Deuteronomy 5:16 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

THE KEY

The Hebrew word for “honour” means to give weight, linking the weight given to parents with the shape and well-being of your own days.

THE MEANING

Your days are shaped by the weight you give your father and mother: their place in your life is consequential, not ornamental. The verse places this honor alongside prolonged days and well-being in the land God gives, holding relationships and a good life together.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the idea that honoring a parent is only a social courtesy with no bearing on how life takes shape. Here, the relationship is not weightless; the verse links it to your days and well-being.

THE ROOT

כַּבֵּד

kabbēd

GROWS FROM

כבד

k-b-d

To be heavy or weighty; in this form, to treat as weighty.

“Give weight to” in this verse is kabbēd. English “honour” can sound like courtesy, but ⁨כבד⁩ (k-b-d) binds honor to heaviness and weight. To honor your parents here is to give their relationship real consequence in the shape of your days.

ALSO GROWS

kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.

כָּבוֹד

The same root names both honor and weight, revealing that the verse’s honor involves recognizing the parents’ significance.

kābēd: Heavy or weighty.

כָּבֵד

This branch preserves the root’s concrete sense: honoring is giving weight to the relationship.

THE PATTERN

A life is shaped by the weight it gives to parental bonds and instruction.

Hear and respond, my son, to the straightening of your father, and do not let go of your mother's instruction. For they are a wreath of favor upon your head, and a necklace about your neck.

Proverbs 1:8-9 · SDVThe father’s instruction and mother’s teaching are pictured as adornment the reader carries, giving their words lasting weight.

Hear and respond, my son, and take my sayings, and the years of your life multiply.

Proverbs 4:10 · SDVReceiving a father’s sayings is directly joined to many years of life, as in Deuteronomy.

Give weight to your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise. That it may go well with you, and you may be long in days upon the earth.

Ephesians 6:2-3 · SDVThe command ties honoring parents to well-being and long life, repeating the bond between relational weight and a good life.

THE THREAD

Therefore the LORD God of Israel says, I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before me for the ages. But now the LORD says, Far be it from me. For those who give me weight, I will give weight; those who make light of me shall be made light.

1 Samuel 2:30 · SDV

The Hebrew verb ⁨כבד⁩ (kābad, “to honor, make weighty”) appears for both honoring God and God honoring in return; “lightly esteemed” sets the opposite image of being light. Deuteronomy uses this same root for honoring parents, then links that weight to the length and goodness of your days.

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