Bible verses about mothers are scattered across both Testaments, from a command carved into stone at Sinai to a young woman’s song of praise in Luke’s Gospel. Read together, they build a picture of motherhood as something scripture treats with real weight, not sentiment reserved for one Sunday a year.
The Quran carries that same weight, and in some places goes further, commanding gratitude to a mother specifically, distinct from the general instruction to honour both parents together. Both scriptures also go beyond command and give us mothers in the narrative itself, Mary chief among them, whose own words and whose own treatment by God’s Prophets tell us as much as any direct instruction does. We will walk through the clearest Bible verses about mothers in order, then place the Quran’s own instructions on mothers beside each one.
Honour Your Mother: The Commandment Behind It All
The starting point for every Bible verse about mothers is the fifth commandment:
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.” (Exodus 20:12, KJV)
Paul repeats it in the New Testament almost word for word, and calls it something rare among the Ten Commandments:
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” (Ephesians 6:1-3, KJV)
“The first commandment with promise.” Out of ten commands, this is the one Paul singles out as carrying an attached blessing. That is not a small detail to build the rest of this list on.
A Mother’s Worth in the Book of Proverbs
Proverbs closes with a description of a mother whose worth is measured in what she builds, not what she is given:
“Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.” (Proverbs 31:28, KJV)
Earlier in the same book, a mother’s teaching is placed on equal footing with a father’s instruction, worth keeping for life:
“My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.” (Proverbs 1:8, KJV)
Wisdom literature in the Bible does not treat a mother’s voice as secondary. It is placed beside the father’s as something a son forsakes at his own loss. The full portrait in Proverbs 31 goes further still, describing a woman who manages a household, trades in the marketplace, plans ahead for her family and speaks with wisdom, and only then are her children described as rising to call her blessed. Honour, in this picture, is a response to a life well lived, not a title handed out by default.
Mary’s Own Words: The Magnificat
Luke’s Gospel records Mary’s own response to becoming the mother of Jesus, a song of praise known as the Magnificat:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord… For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” (Luke 1:46-48, KJV, abridged)
Notice where Mary directs the praise: to God, not to herself, even while acknowledging that generations to come would honour her. That balance, honoured yet pointing away from herself toward God, is worth sitting with. It mirrors the same posture the Quran later gives her own son, Isa, who also redirects worship away from himself and toward the one Lord he and his mother both served.
Jesus Caring for His Mother, Even on the Cross
John records one of the most striking details of the crucifixion: Jesus, in his final hours, still attending to his mother’s welfare.
“When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” (John 19:26-27, KJV)
Even while enduring the crucifixion, the Gospel shows Jesus making practical arrangements for who would care for his mother afterward. Honouring a mother, in this account, was not set aside even in his final hour.
The Quran’s Threefold Emphasis on the Mother
Where the Ten Commandments group “father and mother” together, the Quran sometimes singles the mother out specifically, and explains why:
“And We have enjoined upon man [care] for his parents. His mother carried him, [increasing her] in weakness upon weakness, and his weaning is in two years. Be grateful to Me and to your parents; to Me is the [final] destination.” (Surah Luqman 31:14)
A companion verse in Surah Al-Ahqaf adds the specific length of pregnancy and nursing together, thirty months, as part of the reason gratitude is owed:
“And We have enjoined upon man, to his parents, good treatment. His mother carried him with hardship and gave birth to him with hardship, and his gestation and weaning [period] is thirty months.” (Surah Al-Ahqaf 46:15, abridged)
This is part of why a well-known hadith, narrated in Sunan al-Nasa’i and elsewhere, records the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, naming the mother three times before the father when a man asked who most deserved his good companionship. The Quran’s own verses on pregnancy and nursing are the reasoning behind that answer, not a separate tradition standing apart from scripture.
Maryam, Honoured by Name in the Quran
The Quran does not only command honour for mothers in general. It devotes an entire chapter, Surah Maryam, to one mother by name, the only woman named directly in the Quran’s text. Before Jesus is born, the angels address her directly:
“And [mention] when the angels said, ‘O Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds.'” (Surah Aal-‘Imran 3:42)
A chapter named for her, a direct address from the angels, and a place in the Quran’s text that no other woman is given. For a scripture some assume overlooks women, that is worth pausing on.
What Honouring a Mother Actually Looks Like
Put side by side, the Bible and the Quran do not stop at telling us to honour our mothers in the abstract. Both spell out what that honour looks like in practice. The Bible ties it to obedience while young and to public praise once grown: children who “arise up and call her blessed.” The Quran ties it to gratitude that acknowledges real, physical cost, the weakness of pregnancy, the effort of nursing, spelled out almost clinically so that no one can claim ignorance of what their mother went through.
Neither scripture treats this honour as optional once a son or daughter is grown and independent. The Quran’s instruction in Surah Al-Isra, to not even say “uff” to an aging parent, and the Gospel’s account of Jesus arranging his own mother’s care while dying, both point the same direction: honour for a mother does not expire when she is no longer needed. If anything, both scriptures place the heaviest weight on the years when she needs you most.
For reflection
- Paul calls honouring your mother and father “the first commandment with promise.” Why do you think this particular command carries an attached blessing?
- The Quran explains the command to honour a mother by describing what pregnancy and nursing actually cost her. Does explaining a command change how you keep it?
- Jesus arranged for his mother’s care while he was dying on the cross. What does that detail add to how you read the crucifixion account?
- An entire Quranic chapter is named after Mary, and she is addressed directly by angels. How does that compare with what you assumed the Quran said about women?
- Both scriptures link honouring a mother to a reward, long life in Exodus and Ephesians, gratitude owed to God Himself in the Quran. What does tying the command to a reward tell you about how seriously it is meant to be taken?
Where to take this further
Honouring mothers sits inside a wider set of shared commands between the two scriptures.
- See the full list it belongs to in 10 Commandments in the Bible: What They Teach and How the Quran Upholds Similar Commands.
- Read what both scriptures say about calling on God during hardship in Bible Verses About Healing: What the Bible and Quran Teach About Illness, Healing and Prayer.
- Understand more of what the Quran says about Jesus and his mother in What Muslims Believe About Jesus.
- Start with the basics on our What is Islam? page.
- Come and visit a mosque, with no commitment and no pressure, or book a free guided tour in English, French or Spanish.
- Send this exact question to us directly through Ask About Islam.
- Muslims who want to learn how to discuss questions like this one respectfully can start with our Getting Started guide.
A commandment carved into stone, a mother’s song of praise, a chapter named for her in another scripture centuries later. Two books, read honestly side by side, do not disagree on this one. They agree that a mother’s place is owed real honour, not the leftover kind, and both are specific enough about what that honour costs and what it looks like that neither leaves much room for excuses.