The fifth commandment carries a promise most commandments do not. "My people, the house of Israel, Let every man be instructed in the honour of his father and in the honour of his mother: that your days may be multiplied upon the land which the Lord your God giveth you" (Exodus 20:12, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan).
The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds two crucial words the Hebrew lacks: let every man be instructed. Honor of parents, the Targumist insists, is not instinctive. It is taught. A child who is not shown how to revere elders will not invent the posture on their own. The commandment is as much a duty for the community to teach as for the child to obey.
And the reward is deliberately strange. Not wealth. Not wisdom. Not sons of your own. That your days may be multiplied upon the land. Why length of days? And why on the land?
The rabbis read it this way: a society that honors its elders passes on memory. A society that doesn't, forgets itself. The generation that discards its parents will be discarded by its children. Length of days is not a private reward; it is the durability of a civilization that knows how to hold on to what came before.
The specific mention of mother alongside father is the Targumist's insistence on equality of honor. The Hebrew already has both. The Targum refuses to let that slide into mere paternal deference.
The takeaway: honor flows upward because wisdom flows downward. Break the circuit, and both currents stop.