Mat 15:5 But you say, Whoever shall says [to his] father or [his] mother, [it is] a gift [to God] from that you might have profited by me; and honours not his father or his mother.

I have looked at a lot of versions of this verse and even most try to "clarify" the muddle of the KJV by adding and rearranging the words, but I think they all miss the main point. Most translations make this verse into a statement just about telling parents that the support that they might have gotten was given as a gift to God, but it is a little more than that.

Alternative version: But you command them to tell fathers and mothers, "An offering [to God] came from that which [would have been] my support."

So Christ is accusing the scribes and Pharisees of teaching people to take the money that they would have used for support of their parents and make an offering of it.

In terms of Christ's symbols for spirit, physical, mental, and emotional, the "offering" is in the mental realm, as is all forms of wealth." God or spirit is never mentioned even symbolically in the verse. In Christ system, religious traditions fall into the realm of "emotional relationships." Parents belong both to the realms of the emotional and physical since they have physical needs. Here, Christ is saying symbolically that our primary family relationships take precedence over social relationships not that relationships are more important than God or spirit.

There is also an important and very modern application of this same idea. We may not excuse ourselves from supporting our parents because of religious tithes, but many do excuse themselves from supporting their parents because they claim that is "the government's job" and that this is why they pay taxes. Symbolically, this is exactly what Christ is talking about. People want to use social obligations as an excuse for avoiding personal ones.


"Gift" is from dôron, which means "gift," "present," and specifically a "votive gift" or "offering" to a god. The simpler term without the sense of a votive offering is "dorea."

"Say" is used twice in the original KJV, but there are two different terms used in the original Greek. The first, legô, is used to describe what the scribes "say." It means literally "pick up," but it used to mean "recount," "tell over," "say," "speak," "teach," and "command." The second term, used to describe talking to parents is epo, which is from epos meaning "word." It is used like we might say "give someone the word."