53. We can also see from what the Word’s prophets say about the Philistines that they represented people devoted to a faith divorced from caring. There is the following passage from Jeremiah, for example:

Against the Philistines: Behold, waters are rising up from the north that will become an overflowing river and will flood the earth and all that is in it, the city and all those who live in it. People will cry out and everyone who lives on the earth will wail. Jehovah will devastate the Philistines. (Jeremiah 47:1-2, 4)

The waters rising up from the north are falsities from hell; their becoming an overflowing river and flooding the earth and all that is in it means the consequent destruction of everything in the church; their flooding the city and all those who live in it means the complete destruction of its teachings; people crying out and everyone who lives on earth wailing means the loss of everything true and good in the church; and Jehovah devastating the Philistines means their demise. From Isaiah:

All Philistia, do not rejoice because the rod that was striking you has been broken, for out of the root of the serpent will come a basilisk, and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent. (Isaiah 14:29)

The command to all Philistia not to rejoice means that people devoted to faith divorced from caring should not rejoice in the fact that they are surviving; “for out of the root of the serpent will come a basilisk” means the destruction of everything true they have because of their pride in their own intelligence; “its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent” means rationalizations based on malevolent distortions that oppose what is true and good in the church.

305. THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT

Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long and you may prosper upon earth.

This commandment is found in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16. Honouring your father and mother means in the natural or literal sense honouring one's parents, obeying them, being attached to them, and showing gratitude for the kindnesses they do. These include feeding and clothing their children, and bringing them into the world, so that there they may live civilised and respectable lives; also bringing them into heaven by teaching them the rules of religion. In this way they provide for their temporal prosperity as well as their eternal happiness. They do all this because of the love they have from the Lord, in whose place they act. It also means, in appropriate cases, the honouring of guardians by their wards, if the parents are dead.

In a wider sense this commandment means that one should honour one's king and magistrates, since these provide all with the necessities of life in general, just as parents do in particular cases. In the widest sense the commandment means that one should love one's country, since it feeds and protects one; hence it is called one's fatherland. Honour should be shown by parents to both one's country and its rulers, and they should implant this idea in their children.