Commentaria in Deuteronomium
16. HONOUR THY FATHER AND MOTHER.—“Honour,” first by loving; secondly by showing inward and outward reverence; thirdly by obeying; fourthly by helping and assisting: for honour embraces these four, and these are due to parents: hence Scripture under honour includes also gifts, and Christ understands this precept also of them, Matthew xv, 6, as St. Jerome notes there.
Pliny relates a memorable example of piety toward parents, book VII, chapter xxxvi: “A woman, lowly among the common people, and therefore unknown, who had just been delivered, her mother being shut up in prison as a punishment, having obtained access from the gaoler, always searched lest she bring in any food, was found feeding her with her own breasts: by which miracle the mother was given to the daughter’s piety, and both received perpetual maintenance; and that place was consecrated to the goddess, a temple to Piety having been built on the site of that prison, where now is the theatre of Marcellus.” The daughter of the general Cimon did the same: “For her father Cimon, afflicted with a like fortune, and committed to like custody, now in extreme old age, she nursed, as an infant, at her own breast,” says Valerius Maximus, book V. Illustrious also is what Fulgosus relates, book V, chapter iv, of a man of Toledo, whose father, a goldsmith, had been condemned to death by Peter the First, king of Castile, on false suspicions: his son, from a singular love for his father, ceased not by tears and prayers to urge that his father be spared and himself be put to death in his stead. Which he obtained, and losing his life, gave life to the father from whom he had received life. In the same place he tells how Alexius, son of the Emperor Isaac of Constantinople, restored by arms to the throne his father, deprived of empire and eyes by his brother, and though all saluted him Emperor, himself resigned this name with the empire to his father. Remarkable too is what Ignatius relates, book V, chapter iv, of Cardinal Grimani, who offered himself to prison for his father Antonio.
THAT THOU MAYEST LIVE A LONG TIME.—Hence in Ephesians vi this is called the first commandment with a promise; for it is fit that children, who are grateful to their parents for the life received, should merit its long preservation, as I said on Ephesians vi, 3. See also St. Thomas in Opusculum VII, where among other things he says that after God we are at once bidden to honour parents, on account of the likeness they have to God; for first, they give children stability as to being, Ecclesiasticus vii: “Forget not the groanings of thy mother; remember that thou hadst not been born but through them.” Second, they give children nourishment; third, instruction, chiefly that they fear the Lord and abstain from all sin; they instruct and lead children to the sacraments, to faith, to religion, to Christian manners. A shining example is in Tobias.
St. Thomas adds that children receive life from parents as soldiers receive a fief from the king, so that if they are faithful to him they merit its preservation, if unfaithful its forfeiture. He brings from Cassiodorus and St. Ambrose, Hexameron book V, the example of the storks, which, when their parents have grown old, warm them with their own feathers, bring them food, and by a pious exchange, being young, give back what as little ones they received from their parents. See the nine blessings promised to dutiful children, which I recounted on Genesis ix. Abulensis notes that he who honours his parents, though he die soon, yet has lived long, because time is the measure of acts, not of leisure; hence Wisdom iv it is said: “Being made perfect in a short space, he fulfilled a long time”; and so all good men are long-lived. But this is a mystical sense, and more subtle than solid.
Secondly, St. Jerome on Ephesians vi explains thus, “that thou mayest live a long time,” namely in the land, not of the dying but of the living, that is, in heaven. But the words that follow, both here and in Exodus xx, 12, signify that the land promised to the Israelites is here understood, namely Chanaan, as if to say: If thou honour thy parents, in the land of Chanaan flowing with milk and honey thou shalt live long. God did and performed this for that rude people, or at least compensated the same by a better gift and spiritual grace, as he still does. This reward of long life belongs to dutiful children, as by a law and retaliation of nature; hence it was known also to the Gentiles, and often proved by experience. So Homer, Iliad, book O, namely 47, of Hippothous: “He did not repay his parents the return for his nurture, and therefore a short life befell him.” And Plato, when in the books On the Laws he had commended the honour due to parents, concludes thus: “If we shall thus exactly observe it, we shall receive from the Gods worthy rewards, living in the best hope.”
17. THOU SHALT NOT KILL.—He forbids here the killing of man, not of a brute or plant, as the Manichees understood. See St. Augustine, City of God book I, chapters xx and xxi; and this is plain from the Hebrew. For the word ratsach, that is, he slew, belongs only to man; hence meratsechim are called homicides.
God therefore forbids here the unjust killing of a man (such as is that which is done by private authority, unless it be done for the necessary defence of oneself or one’s own), also blows, quarrels and anger, which tend to it, and are as it were the way and beginning of homicide. See St. Thomas in Opusculum VII, finely describing the deformity of homicide and of the other vices here forbidden.
18. NEITHER SHALT THOU COMMIT ADULTERY.—God forbids here all intercourse outside marriage, and every abuse of those members which are destined for generation, namely fornication, adultery, incest, sodomy, bestiality, pollution, and vices akin to these, such as kisses, words, looks, touches and impure gestures.
Under the more notable and famous part, namely adultery, he wished the whole kind of lust and all its species to be understood. So St. Augustine, Question LXXI. From this place, therefore, by the common opinion of Interpreters, it is plain that simple fornication, which is of a single man with a single woman, and any lust whatever outside wedlock, is forbidden by the law of nature and by divine law. Although therefore Moses in the Pentateuch did not forbid this fornication in express and explicit words, yet in this place he comprehended and forbade it by a universal precept. Fornication with a married or betrothed woman he expressly forbade, Deuteronomy xxiii [xxii], 24 and following, because this is adultery, in which an injury is done to a third party, namely the spouse, and to marriage itself or betrothal. That simple fornication is here forbidden, and that the precept “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is so to be understood, the ancient Hebrews held and taught.
Hence Tobias, chapter iv: “Take heed to keep thyself, my son, from all fornication, and beside thy wife never endure to know a crime.” And Ecclesiasticus xix, 3: “He that joineth himself to harlots will be wicked; rottenness and worms shall inherit him.” See what was said on 1 Corinthians vi, 9.
The same is gathered from Ezechiel chapter xvi and chapter xxiii, and elsewhere everywhere. For the Prophets often compare idolatry to fornication, as a thing foul, unlawful and infamous.
St. Thomas notes that the adulterer and adulteress violate, first, the law of nature; second, the ordinance of God; third, the Sacrament of matrimony, and so commit sacrilege; fourth, they are traitors, because they withdraw themselves from their husbands or wives and give themselves to strangers; fifth, they are thieves, because they cause the goods of husbands or wives to come to strangers, namely to the children of the adulterer. See Proverbs vi, 26. The punishments of adultery among various nations I recounted on Genesis chapter xxxviii, 24.
19. AND THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.—In like manner is forbidden here every unlawful usurpation of another’s property, says St. Augustine. Philo notes, in his book On the Decalogue, after the beginning, that God in the assembly and company of so many thousands of Hebrews addresses each one singly, not all, nor many; for he says: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal; and not: You shall not kill, etc. Why this? First, to teach each one that, while he obeys God and the laws of God, he is equal in honour to a most numerous people, nay to the whole world; whence elsewhere, praising the just man, he says: “I am the Lord thy God;” second, that each might be rendered more obedient to the law, when he hears addressed to himself, not to the crowd, what is commanded; third, that God might show how much he makes of each, as one whom he invites to the banquet of his oracles, and how much princes and magistrates esteem their citizens, even the most abject, and how becomingly and fairly they ought to deal with them, and address them, as those whom the King of kings deigns to honour so greatly.
20. NOR SHALT THOU BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOUR,—From the principal crime of false witness understand the other lesser ones akin to it, such as detraction, contumely, derision, whispering, and every other injury done to a neighbour by words, finally every abuse of the tongue. So St. Thomas, II-II, Question CXXII.