על עשרת הדברות כ״בOn the Decalogue 22
א׳
1[106] After dealing with the seventh day, He gives the fifth commandment on the honour due to parents. This commandment He placed on the border-line between the two sets of five; it is the last of the first set in which the most sacred injunctions are given and it adjoins the second set which contains the duties of man to man.
ב׳
2[107] The reason I consider is this: we see that parents by their nature stand on the border-line between the mortal and the immortal side of existence, the mortal because of their kinship with men and other animals through the perishableness of the body; the immortal because the act of generation assimilates them to God, the generator of the All.
ג׳
3[108] Now we have known some who associate themselves with one of the two sides and are seen to neglect the other. They have drunk of the unmixed wine of pious aspirations and turning their backs upon all other concerns devoted their personal life wholly to the service of God.
ד׳
4[109] Others conceiving the idea that there is no good outside doing justice to men have no heart for anything but companionship with men. In their desire for fellowship they supply the good things of life in equal measure to all for their use, and deem it their duty to alleviate by anything in their power the dreaded hardships.
ה׳
5[110] These may be justly called lovers of men, the former sort lovers of God. Both come but halfway in virtue; they only have it whole who win honour in both departments. But all who neither take their fit place in dealings with men by sharing the joy of others at the common good and their grief at the reverse, nor cling to piety and holiness, would seem to have been transformed into the nature of wild beasts. In such bestial savagery the first place will be taken by those who disregard parents and are therefore the foes of both sides of the law, the godward and the manward.