son of commandment

123:5.2For three years—un­til he was ten—he at­tended the el­e­men­tary school of the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. For these three years he stud­ied the rudi­ments of the Book of the Law as it was re­corded in the He­brew tongue. For the fol­low­ing three years he stud­ied in the ad­vanced school and com­mit­ted to mem­ory, by the method of re­peat­ing aloud, the deeper teach­ings of the sa­cred law. He grad­u­ated from this school of the syn­a­gogue dur­ing his thir­teenth year and was turned over to his par­ents by the syn­a­gogue rulers as an ed­u­cated “son of the com­mand­ment”—hence­forth a re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen of the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael, all of which en­tailed his at­ten­dance at the Passovers in Je­ru­sa­lem; ac­cord­ingly, he at­tended his first Pass­over that year in com­pany with his fa­ther and mother.

125:2.6Through­out the Pass­over week, Je­sus kept his place among the new sons of the com­mand­ment, and this meant that he must seat him­self out­side the rail which seg­re­gated all per­sons who were not full cit­i­zens of Is­rael. Be­ing thus made con­scious of his youth, he re­frained from ask­ing the many ques­tions which surged back and forth in his mind; at least he re­frained un­til the Pass­over cel­e­bra­tion had ended and these re­stric­tions on the newly con­se­crated youths were lifted.

124:5.4On the first day of the week, March 20, A.D. 7, Je­sus grad­u­ated from the course of train­ing in the lo­cal school con­nected with the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue. This was a great day in the life of any am­bi­tious Jew­ish fam­ily, the day when the first-born son was pro­nounced a “son of the com­mand­ment” and the ran­somed first-born of the Lord God of Is­rael, a “child of the Most High” and ser­vant of the Lord of all the earth.

125:4.3At the sec­ond con­fer­ence Je­sus had made bold to ask ques­tions, and in a very amaz­ing way he par­tic­i­pated in the tem­ple dis­cus­sions but al­ways in a man­ner con­sis­tent with his youth. Some­times his pointed ques­tions were some­what em­bar­rass­ing to the learned teach­ers of the Jew­ish law, but he evinced such a spirit of can­did fair­ness, cou­pled with an ev­i­dent hunger for knowl­edge, that the ma­jor­ity of the tem­ple teach­ers were dis­posed to treat him with ev­ery con­sid­er­a­tion. But when he pre­sumed to ques­tion the jus­tice of putting to death a drunken gen­tile who had wan­dered out­side the court of the gen­tiles and un­wit­tingly en­tered the for­bid­den and re­put­edly sa­cred precincts of the tem­ple, one of the more in­tol­er­ant teach­ers grew im­pa­tient with the lad’s im­plied crit­i­cisms and, glow­er­ing down upon him, asked how old he was. Je­sus replied, “thir­teen years lack­ing a tri­fle more than four months.” “Then,” re­joined the now irate teacher, “why are you here, since you are not of age as a son of the law?” And when Je­sus ex­plained that he had re­ceived con­se­cra­tion dur­ing the Pass­over, and that he was a fin­ished stu­dent of the Naz­a­reth schools, the teach­ers with one ac­cord de­ri­sively replied, “We might have known; he is from Naz­a­reth.” But the leader in­sisted that Je­sus was not to be blamed if the rulers of the syn­a­gogue at Naz­a­reth had grad­u­ated him, tech­ni­cally, when he was twelve in­stead of thir­teen; and not­with­stand­ing that sev­eral of his de­trac­tors got up and left, it was ruled that the lad might con­tinue undis­turbed as a pupil of the tem­ple dis­cus­sions.