How God Honors the Elders From Sinai to the End of Days

"Go and gather the elders of Israel" (Exodus 3:16): not in one place and not in two places does the Omnipresent share honor with the elders; in every place you find that the Holy One, blessed be He, shares honor with the elders. Similarly (Numbers 11:16), "Gather for Me seventy men from the elders of Israel"; (Exodus 4:29) "And Moses and Aaron went and gathered all the elders of the children of Israel"; "And to Moses He said, Come up to the Lord," and (Exodus 24:14) "and to the elders He said, Wait for us here"; (Leviticus 9:1) "And it came to pass on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons" and so on. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai says: from where do we learn that in the time to come honor is shared with the elders? As it is said (Isaiah 24:23), "And the moon shall be ashamed and the sun abashed" and so on. It does not say "before His kings" or "before His prophets," but rather "before His elders shall be glory." Is this not a matter of all the more so [kal va-chomer]? If the One who spoke and the world came into being is destined to share honor with the elders, how much more so should flesh and blood share honor with the elders. And so you find that the Omnipresent grieves over a single elder as over all Israel, as it is said, "I was angry with My people, I profaned My inheritance." One might think they should be profaned over everything; therefore Scripture says, "upon the elder you laid your yoke very heavily" (Isaiah 47:6).