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Emmanuel Goldstein’s Substack · Jun 20, 2026

Sabbath study, xxiv: debunking the widespread myth of ‘*honor* your father and mother’

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Emmanuel Goldstein · Emmanuel Goldstein’s Substack

From generation to generation, it is customary for supposedly “conservative” varieties of self-proclaimed Christians to take as strictly hardline a view of a dogmatic face-value interpretation of a biblical decree as possible and pass that as representative of what the Word of God proclaims. One such paternalistically enforced example is that of “honor your father and mother,” used to crudely dismiss genuine victims of parental abuse and invert any precept of justice and mercy by telling victims it’s actually their fault for not “honoring” their parents sufficiently, etc. etc.. (I cannot even begin to list how many times that mantra has been obnoxiously “splained” to me)

As it turns out, the mass majority of “Christendom” were wrong all along, because they were apparently too blinded by the voluptuous sensuality of their reprobate minds to humble themselves before the God of the universe and actually seek to understand what His inspired scriptures actually say. This is the text in question as it stands in the original Semitic Biblical Hebrew: כַּבֵּד אֶת־אָבִיךָ וְאֶת־אִמֶּךָ (KaBëd et-äviykhä w’et-iMekhä)

Here is the interlinear:

  • כַּבֵּד (KaBëd: 3513, z8761): shall heavify [verb: Piel, imperative]

  • אֶת (et: 853): selfsame [mark of the accusative]

  • [the] {implied definite article}

  • אָבִי (äviy: 1): father [noun: masculine singular]

  • [of] {implied preposition}

  • ךָ (khä): yours [pronominal suffix: second-person singular]

  • וְ (w’: 9007): and [prefixed conjunction]

  • אֶת (et: 853): selfsame [mark of the accusative]

  • [the] {implied definite article}

  • אִמֶּ (iMe: 517): mother [noun: feminine singular]

  • [of] {implied preposition}

  • ךָ (khä): yours [pronominal suffix: second-person singular]

The word in question to grasp here is כַּבֵּד (KaBëd), the Piel-stemmed and imperative-mooded variant of the root word כָּבַד (kāḇaḏ). As clarified by Strong’s Concordance:

כָּבַד kâbad, kaw-bad'; or כָּבֵד kâbêd; a primitive root; to be heavy, i.e. in a bad sense (burdensome, severe, dull) or in a good sense (numerous, rich, honorable); causatively, to make weighty (in the same two senses):—abounding with, more grievously afflict, boast, be chargeable, × be dim, glorify, be (make) glorious (things), glory, (very) great, be grievous, harden, be (make) heavy, be heavier, lay heavily, (bring to, come to, do, get, be had in) honour (self), (be) honourable (man), lade, × more be laid, make self many, nobles, prevail, promote (to honour), be rich, be (go) sore, stop.

Protestant Hebraist scholar Wilhelm Gesenius said essentially the same thing: the primary definition of the verb כַּבֵּד (KaBëd) literally means “to be heavy,” or otherwise plausibly contracted to a single word (by myself, E.G.) as “heavify.” The usage of this verb throughout the Old Testament is two-edged in contextual application: notably, it encapsulates the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus, both when the Egyptian monarch hardened his heart of his own accord, and also when Jᴇʜᴏᴠᴀʜ hardened it further. Anyone who insists on translating the verb כַּבֵּד (KaBëd) Fifth Commandment as “honor” ought to therefore maintain etymological consistently and treat the verb down to its root as straightforwardly carrying the primary connotation of honoring in all instances. Let’s see how this works out whenever the term is used in locally contextual negative implications!

Obviously, the reading of “honored” only appears at face value to suffice so long as whatever variant of כָּבַד (kāḇaḏ) that is used in a passage carries a “positive” contextual connotation in the implied local application. However, it can likewise carry a “negative” contextual implication, because the word itself inherently does not universally carry one singular implication—in such instances, translating it as “honored” reduces entire passages into pathetic jokes. The reason why this verb in question cannot at its Semitic-Hebraic root be simplistically reduced to pure positive (or pure negative) connotations is because Biblical Hebrew is NOT Hellenistically dualistic—the providentially decreed words of Jᴇʜᴏᴠᴀʜ are a two-edged sword that cuts in both directions.1 כָּבַד (kāḇaḏ) literally means “to make heavy” a.k.a. “heavify,” whether heavifying something/someone who is already on the path of righteousness to accelerate and catalyze them toward a perfected vindication, or to heavify something/someone on the path of wickedness to judicially harden them toward an accelerated and catalyzed highway speedrun to doom and perdition.

In every single instance of the Hebrew Bible where a variant of כָּבַד (kāḇaḏ) is used, applying the root translated word “heavify” will render the reading universally sensible no matter the local contextual application: whether the subject in question is good or evil, the act of heavifying them means to magnify their trajectory of decisive actions and accelerate/catalyze them on the path they were already in.

So what does it mean then that the Fifth Commandment actually means to heavify one’s selfsame father and selfsame mother? Obviously, the implications are two-edged, contingent on whether one’s earthly parents—to begin with—seek after Jᴇʜᴏᴠᴀʜ out of a pure heart in pious humility, or whether they behave wickedly. Whether one’s parents choose toward a walk unto heavenly righteousness or not, the command is universally plain and simple: each person must heavify their parents, a.k.a. accelerate and catalyze them on the path they already chose for themselves. This means that if selfsame any particular kenotically pious Christian is burdened in having to deal with toxic/abusive parents, their obligation is NOT to simplistically “honor” or “love” them in some one-dimensional sense of blank-check universal obeying and affection, but rather to strategically (in enwisened discernment as that of a serpent while concurrently and without contradiction retaining the innocence of a dove2) “help” them pursue their own ungodly individual passions so long as it does not directly violate the precepts of God (i.e. so long as it doesn’t directly harm anyone else in the process), for instance doing material household chores and conducting errands as they request if they’re lazy, and refusing to obey them if they demand their child do something that patently and brazenly is in violation of Jᴇʜᴏᴠᴀʜ’s law. In doing so, a wicked earthly parent is heavified toward rigidly fixed complacency in their depravities, judicially hardened by coals of fire heaped on their head3 stored for the day of judgment when they will one day pay for their crimes.4

Of course, don’t expect the mass majority of so-called “Christians”—not to mention really just the entire world in its en masse majority collectives—to ultimately internalize this comprehension with sincere acceptation, since all they have been doing to this day is refusing to repent of their idolatrous abominations, fulfilling the prophetic declaration given almost two millennia ago:5

And the rest of the men—who were not killed by these plagues—not even repented of the works of their hands, that not should they enhomage to the demons, and [the] idols [of] the golden, and silver, and brazen, and stone, and wooden, which neither [are] to see, nor to hear, nor to walk; and they repented not of the murders of theirs, nor of the sorceries [of] theirs, nor of the fornications of theirs, nor of [the] thefts of theirs.

3

Prov. 25:21-22; Rom. 12:20.

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