For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’
Evil manners, we say, beget good laws. The intemperate heat of the Jewish teachers for the support of their hierarchy, occasioned many excellent discourses of our Saviour's for the settling of the truth, as here. I. Here, is the cavil of the scribes and Pharisees at Christ's disciples, for eating with unwashen hands.
Commenting on Matthew 15:1-9
For God commanded, saying,.... That he might not be thought to suggest this without any foundation, he gives them an instance, wherein a command of God was transgressed, by the observance of their tradition: the command he refers to, stands in Exo 20:12 and is this; Honour thy father and mother.
Verse 4. For God commanded, etc. That is, in the fifth commandment, . To honour is to obey, to reverence, to speak kindly to, to speak and think well of. To curse is to disobey, to treat with irreverence, to swear at, to speak ill of, to think evil of in the heart, to meditate or do any evil to a parent. All this is included in the original word.