Proverbs 20c

One more devotional from Proverbs 20: Family Matters. 

20: 20 If you curse father or mother,

Your lamp will go out in utter darkness. 

Oddly enough, this sounds like a curse itself. It is nearly the mirror image of one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20: 12). Both the positive and the negative injunction speak about the effect on life of one’s behavior toward parents.If there is a difference, it lies in that the commandment seems to be more of a collective statement of consequences since it refers to Israel’s tenure in the land. 

I am reminded of the respect and restraint that David showed for King Saul, not his father but certainly a father figure. After the Goliath episode, Saul invited young David to serve among his court retainers. Saul had a problem with depression, and when he was in a mood, David would play the harp to calm his soul. Saul’s son Jonathan was David’s closest friend, they were like brothers. 

So, when Saul went off the rails and began accusing David of being disloyal, he tried to hunt David down. Several times David crept in close enough to kill Saul, but he would not do it out of respect for the king. One time he left the cave where Saul slept, then called out to him: 

“I will not raise my hand against my lord; for he is the LORD’s anointed. See, my father; see the corner of your cloak in my hand; you may know for certain that there is no wrong or treason in my hands.”

Saul replied: “Is this your voice, my son David? … You are more righteous than I; for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil” (I Samuel 24:10-11, 16-17).  

David bent over backwards to bless his ‘father’ Saul. David even went out of his way to find Saul’s grandson, Mephibosheth, and care for him for the rest of his life since all the rest of Saul’s family had been killed. Is that what the commandment and this verse are talking about? 

There seems today to be a trend sweeping the United States, and that is adult children shutting out their parents, and/or vice versa. Sometimes abuse, such as incest, legitimately causes a rift. Sometimes it is politics that splits a family, sometimes money, sometimes some silly incident that is blown out of proportion. It seems like, among my own high school and college friends, I know several parents who have no communication with at least one of their adult children. Is this more common now? Why? 

For what it’s worth, I will relate a story that my mother told me, more than once. Was she repeating herself to make a point with me? Probably. 

She said: “Once when I was young, about 12, I was riding with my father in the car. He was smoking a cigar, and the windows were open. The wind blew a live ash across the seat and it landed on my leg. It burned me, but I brushed it off and didn’t say anything to him.” Her only explanation was “I would never talk back to him.” A different generation.

20:29.   The glory of youths is their strength,

But the beauty of the aged is their gray hair..

Perhaps this sheds more light on the previous proverb. Most societies recognize some generational differences that lead to particular statuses and roles. Some are more particular than others. Among cattle herders in East Africa, for example, it is common to initiate boys and girls regularly into age sets or age grades. Each set includes people who were born over about a 10 year  period. The sets are initiated together and given a name. Usually a set moves forward together in status and function; for boys, from goat and cattle herder to warrior, from warrior to married man, from married man to elder.

The point, which is made in different ways in different societies, is that each generation has a place and a function, and society works well when these are recognized and people are permitted to carry out their role.I once heard a Chinese-American anthropologist, long gone now, say half-jokingly, “I was born in a society that honored the ancestors and I was a youth. Now I am old and accomplished, living in a society that honors the youth and ignores the elderly. I did it backwards.”  

Perhaps we are losing the art of respecting people wherever they are in life for the talents and abilities they have at that point in life. If we retained that art, we would not disregard the young or discard the old. Each would have a respected place.