parerchomai

This is the plain, physical sense: a person or thing moving past a point. Someone walking down a road goes past a spot, a boat, or another person. Depending on the setting the same motion can be described from the walker's side (going by) or from the standpoint of the person being reached (coming up to them).

Two shades sit close together here. Usually it simply means to travel past. But because coming past someone often means arriving right where they are, the word can also carry the friendly sense of coming over to attend to a person, and, at the other extreme, of forcing a way past resistance.

One memorable use belongs to this physical picture but points at something being taken away rather than a body moving: Jesus prays that the cup, or the hour, of his suffering might pass from him. The image is of a dreaded thing sweeping by and leaving him untouched, the way a traveler passes and is gone.

Here the motion becomes a picture of time and existence running out. A stretch of time goes by and is gone. More weightily, things that seem permanent, heaven and earth, the present world order, a rich man's brief glory, are said to pass away, meaning they will not last. The same verb can mark the simple close of an hour or a season and the final disappearance of the whole created order.

Jesus sharpens the picture into a contrast: heaven and earth will pass away, but his words will never pass away. Paul uses it for the decisive break in a person joined to Christ, where the old life has passed away and everything has become new. The common thread is that what once was is now finished, gone for good.

This sense takes the idea of going past and applies it to obligations. To pass by justice or love is to walk right past them instead of doing them, that is, to neglect them. To pass by a command is to overstep it, that is, to disobey. Both uses depend on the same picture as the physical sense: something is set in your path and you go past it rather than stopping for it.

The word here is not simply forgetfulness; it is a failure to honor something that had a claim on the person. In one case Jesus charges religious leaders with tithing tiny herbs while stepping past the weightier matters of justice and the love of God. In the other, a resentful son insists he has never once stepped past his father's command.