Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head— The equity and excellence of this law must strike every person who hears it, and give a high idea of the wisdom and goodness of the Jewish Lawgiver. It is, indeed, one of the plainest dictates of nature to reverence our superiors in age; and we find scarcely any civilized nations who have not enforced this dictate. Among the Egyptians it was enjoined, that their young men, when they met an elder, should turn aside to give him the way, and rise up at his approach. The Lacedemonians enjoined that the aged should be honoured as parents: and Plato finely remarks (for a heathen philosopher), that young men should glory first in obeying the laws; for this is the same as obeying God: and next, in reverencing their superiors in age; those especially who have passed their days honourably: and therefore Juvenal very excellently observes, that, in the more uncorrupted ages, it was looked upon as a portentous crime for young men not to reverence the aged.
Credebant hoc grande nefas, et morte piandum, Si juvenis vetulo non assurrexerat. Sat. 13.
"They thought it such a crime, as death alone Could expiate,—if a young man did not rise Before the hoary head."
The expressive elegance of the sacred writer, thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, is well preserved in the poet. Some of the Jewish writers think that this verse enjoins three degrees of honour: one to the aged; another to the wise, the old man, by which they mean the elders or teachers of the law; and the third to the judges, whom they take to be meant by אלהיךֶ eloheika, here rendered by God. But the most probable and natural interpretation is that which refers the whole verse to superiors in age.