Introduction
Exodus 20:2-17 (with a re-telling in Deuteronomy 5:7-21, form the Ten Commandments. Sometimes, I think people who have at least heard about these commandments the initial response is something like, Oh no, not this again. It feels more like someone is nagging or nit picking us to death. Yet, I am going to look at the commandments from a variety of perspectives. The basic one, however, is that they continue to provide inspiration for reflecting upon a meaningful and whole life. A full discussion of this area of theology would include a discussion of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. It would include a full discussion of what it means to love God and neighbor. It would mean a reflecting upon the household rules of Paul. It would mean reflecting upon the virtue and vice lists that we find in the New Testament. In other words, the Ten Commandments are not the only source of our Christian reflection upon ethics, but they are a significant source. Thus, I mildly disagree that anyone who knows the Ten Commandments perfectly knows the entire scriptures, even while I understand the sentiment.[1]
After careful reading and study, rabbinic authorities discerned that there are 613 commandments in the Hebrew Bible. These are called in rabbinic parlance the taryag commands, a name derived from the letters used to spell the number 613 (tav = 400, resh = 200, yod = 10, and gimel = 3). Thus, the Ten Commandments are only representatives of the two foundational categories of Israelite law, namely, correct worship of God and correct relationships with others. To assume that all Israelite culture is summed up in only these 10 is to mistake the scope of Israelite law. All of life under the covenant — economic life, dietary customs, clothing customs, marriage customs, inheritance rights, legal issues, medical treatments — and many more aspects of life were to adhere to God's instructions.
G. K. Chesterton referred to these commandments as "tremendous trifles." Life, Chesterton observed, does not usually present us with big temptations or grandiose sins. Instead, we constantly encounter little temptations that can easily slip under the threshold of our levels of acceptance and tolerance. These little, insignificant temptations nibble away at us‑‑gradually compromising our integrity with each tiny bite. Human moral failure does not usually come from enormous, glaring misdeeds‑‑ things like murdering, stealing or cheating on a spouse. We do not rip out our ethical standards by the roots. Instead, we are far more likely to experience the gradual decay of our human moral fiber through the insidious work of "tremendous trifles"‑‑such as holding onto our anger, backbiting, small‑mindedness or selfishness. Eventually our standards of acceptable behavior slip lower and lower, until we can talk ourselves into almost anything, as long as it is to our own benefit.
The gift of creation shows the love of God for what God has created. God values the diversity of the things God has created. Humanity holds a special place in creation, simply because humanity reflects the image of God. Human beings are children of God, part of the same family, and deserving of respect, worth, and dignity. Far more unites us as a human family than divides us.
Of course, humanity has failed to honor the God who brought forth life and has therefore failed to honor the things and people God has made. Human beings have great glory because of what God has made us to be, and great misery because of the rebellion that exists in us all against what God desires. God has taken the time to work with a family (Abraham) and a nation (Israel); thereby demonstrating that God has the patience to work with humanity. God has revealed the way to begin the healing, liberating, and learning process to become the people God intended us to be.
God established a covenant with Israel, and through it, desired to bring humanity into this covenant. The nation struggled with this God. As such, the nation represents the struggle of humanity with God. Humanity has one God, to whom it owes exclusive loyalty, and who forbids honoring any created thing as if it were god. God forbids dishonoring God with our speech. God wants us to set aside the work that so often consumes us and find genuine Sabbath rest. If we can honor God in these ways, we will also honor our neighbors with the respect they deserve. We will do so by honoring parents throughout our lives, respecting human life, respecting the property of others, protecting the reputation of others, and not allowing envy to work its way into our hearts.
In sum, we are to love God with all that we are, and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we want the healing, liberation, and learning that God wants to bring into our lives, we will show forth the virtues of a Spirit-filled life.
When I write it like this, it seems so simple. Yet, humanity continues its struggle. We continue our struggle.
Scholars call the Ten Commandments "apodictic." They do not argue or reason. They simply state.
Luther once said that when God speaks to humanity, God talks "baby talk." God, gathering now liberated Israel free from Egyptian slavery, speaks to Israel as a parent speaks to a young child: Baby talk. Direct, succinct, apodictic. You do not kill. You do not steal. Abraham Lincoln once asked his advisors, "If you call a sheep's tail a leg, how many legs would the sheep have?" "Five?" they guessed. "No," said Lincoln, "because calling a tail a leg won't make it one." Many people, maybe some of us discovered the shipwreck we make of our lives when we call a wrong a right, as if that would make it right.
G. K. Chesterton said that, if people are walking and come to a cliff, and keep on walking off the edge of the cliff, they would not break the law of gravity; they would prove it!
When we freedom-loving Americans hear the word law, we tend to think of restriction, unfair, externally imposed limitation. Who has the right to tell us what to do with these "laws"? You have heard of the allegedly "legalistic" religion of Israel whereas Christians have the good news of freedom in Christ. No law for us!
Many of us need direct, succinct, straightforward speech about our lives. The chaotic, confused, sad state of many of our lives are sad testimonial to our need for some direct, simple, straightforward talk about the way things are in the world. Israel testified that God loved the people enough to teach them, to show them the way in simple, straightforward, direct ways that people could understand.
That is the Ten Commandments - God's straightforward explication of the facts of life. This way leads to life. All other wanderings and moral complexity lead to death.
Fidelity in your marriage is not a limitation; rather, it is a happy way to live. Peacefulness, honesty in our dealings with others, honoring our elders, and not taking what is not ours, are not ends in themselves; they are our means toward happiness.
The love of God for us reaches toward us within our history to invite people on a walk with God. God chose the Jews, of all the peoples of the world, to receive the gift of God's commandments. God was doing through Jesus what God was doing through the Ten Commandments: loving us and showing us the way.
The Ten Commandments is not some set of harshly imposed, unrealistic divine demands. They are God's gift to show us the way. What we call "the law," Israel called "Torah." Torah means literally "the way," or even more literally "the finger pointing the way."
These laws are not the opposite of God's grace; they are tangible, continuing proof of God's grace. These laws are not an unfair, restrictive limitation of the good life; they are the steps that lead to the good life. They are, in themselves, a gift of God, which is the very definition of "grace." God has not left us to wander, to discover the way of life on our own. God graciously shows us the way, points the way to life through these Ten Commandments. God has given us, through the Jewish people, a great gift in these simple commandments, showing a way that leads to life.
Today, we need laws motivated by a kind spirit, by care about the welfare of other people. We need guidelines by which to know what will accomplish such worthy ends. Here are six rules for moral decision making which follow from the basic law of love.
We often speak of breaking the Ten Commandments. I have done so. Yet, if we think about it, the commandments are fine. They are solid and strong. What we do is break ourselves against these commandments. We crash into them and hurt those we love as well as ourselves. If we collide with the commandments, we are going to get hurt. Think of it this way. We lead lives that do not flourish when we do not do the following.
· We do not give God proper honor through our allegiance to God,
· We present our interests as identical with God’s interest, placing political or economic ideology ahead of God
· We dishonor God with our speech.
· We work 24/7, demonstrating our devotion to consumerism and materialism.
· We fail to honor and respect our elders.
· We carry hatred and resentments in our hearts against others.
· We are unfaithful to our wedding vows.
· We take for ourselves what belongs to others.
· We pass on gossip, rumors and innuendo against a neighbor.
· We are torn up inside because of our inability to match the success of others.
It might be beneficial to take some time with the Ten Commandments. Reflect upon ways in which they provide guidance for those who wish to fulfill the will and purpose of God in their lives. In some cases, such as idolatry and the Sabbath, consider how you would apply them to your life. Are these commandments something you desire in your life and find valuable? Do you find resistance and rebellion against them in your thoughts and behavior?
I find in these commandments a challenging opportunity to discuss the theological history of the Mosaic period (Torah), the Tribal Federation period and the period of sacral kingship. We should also gain some insight into how the J document incorporated the concerns of the commandments into its account of the history of the Patriarchs. The intellectual leaders of Israel in exile wrestled with what God wanted of them, given the reality of exile. The kingship of the line of David is gone, having had behind it the promise of God. They are no longer in the land promised to the Patriarchs and to the twelve tribes. They are no longer in the city, Jerusalem, which seemed impregnable. The temple is gone. Who are the people of God now, in this changed situation? The Ten Commandments reveal the deep structure of the history that contains so much of the Old Testament. The Torah and the theological history of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings will show how Israel deserved the punishment of the exile because it steadily and regularly broke its side of the covenant. Further, these commandments also provide a wonderful opportunity to show how the New Testament offers its own interpretation of the commandments. We can see this particularly in Matthew 5, where Jesus ascends the mountain and utter his words, even as Moses will do. Jesus begins with the beatitudes and a reinterpretation of the commandments around the theme of love of God and neighbor.
The passage begins with God speaking “all these words.” The passage begins with the Lord (Yahweh) self-identifying as their God (Elohim), the one who brought them out of Egypt and their houses of slavery. The authority of the Lord derives from delivering the people from bondage. It also provides a motive for the people to give their sole allegiance to the Lord, for the Lord alone delivered the people from bondage. This suggests that grace precedes the law. Israel does not establish its relationship with the Lord by keeping the Ten Commandments. Rather, the keeping of the commandments is an expression of gratitude for the things that the Lord has already done in bringing freedom and a means for maintaining a healthy relationship with the Lord and with others.
Commandments 1-4
Commandments 1-4 deal with what it means to love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. We find these words in Mark 12:29-30, referring to Deuteronomy 6:4-5.
First
The first commandment (Exodus 20: 3, Deuteronomy 5:7) is 3 you shall have no other gods before me. This appears as a simple and direct command. Here is the self-identification of the Lord. It takes for granted the existence of other gods, ensuring only the exclusive loyalty to the Lord by Israel. This commandment assumes the existence of other gods, as do other passages. Thus, whoever sacrifices to another god shall be devoted to destruction (Exodus 22:20), they are not to invoke the names of other gods (Exodus 23:13), and they are not to worship another god, for the Lord is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14). They are not to listen to prophets who claim to have interpreted a dream that encourage them to follow and serve other gods (Deuteronomy 13:2-3). The Lord hates those who pay regard to worthless idols (Psalm 31:6).
Some scholars speculate that verse 4 = verse 8 regarding images was inserted here, separating verses 5-6 = 9-10, where the real possibility was present to bow to and serve other gods in the sense of performing a service, laboring for them, and make sacrificial offerings to them. Early Israel was a community of people called to exclusive covenant loyalty to the Lord that prohibited them from allegiance to other gods they assumed existed but held no power over them. It does not follow from knowledge of the God of Israel that this god is identical with God. At first, God appears to outsiders to be simply the local God of this people standing alongside other gods. The first commandment establishes the fact that for the covenant people there can be no other god but this one God. Failure to obey this command by bowing to and serving other gods will create a situation where Israel will itself undergo the punishment of a ban (Deuteronomy 8:19-20). Yet, even to the faith awareness of Israel it was not at first self-evident that their god was also God.[2] Joshua 24:15 leaves no suggestion that the gods of the Amorites were figments of the imaginations those who believe in them and serve them. Pre-exilic Old Testament texts take for granted the existence of other gods. The important thing for Israel and for the church as it expands its notion of the people of the God of Israel, is that there is only one God that matters to it. Biblical texts distinguish between God and other divine beings, both angels and demons. This God is jealous (Joshua 24:19), so they cannot serve any deity besides the Lord, for this “El the Zealous,” an early designation of the Lord within the Tribal Federation. Such divine holy zeal can turn against the elect people if they do not maintain their allegiance to the Lord. Jesus urges us to count the cost of being a disciple (Luke 9:62). The holiness of the Lord is to lead to a holy people in the sense that the people are set apart of the Lord to call for the purposes of the Lord. You cannot serve the Lord God and another god (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7). There is to be no “limping around” (Elijah — I Kings 18:21) between gods. Joshua reminds his hearers (including us) that if we abandon our delivering God, then God will not be there for us to forgive us. But the God who has redeemed us does invite us to exclusive service and ongoing blessing. See Jesus’ statements about not being able to serve both God and mammon (KJV). Further, if Jesus is Lord (number one and only), then his followers follow him and his ways exclusively (or do we?). In practice, the people of God will always have the option of finding other gods to serve, and for us as readers, the adoption of a controlling priority in our lives would be our way of doing so. The only way to avoid this is giving priority in our lives to the written witness to divine revelation as represented here and, from the Christian perspective, clarified further in Jesus Christ.
Monolatry is frequent in Deuteronomy, an idea often expressed by representing the Lord as the ruler of the divine council, a perspective that represents an earlier form of Israelite religion. Radical monotheism affirms the greatness of the Lord by denying the existence of other deities. That perspective, originating in II Isaiah, became normative in Judaism following the return from exile in the Persian period. We do not reach an exclusive monotheistic claim later in II Isaiah 45:21 that there is no other god beside the Lord. The earlier view was no longer intelligible. Judaism would read its monotheism into texts that arose from an earlier view of the divine realm.
When we read back to Genesis 3, the estrangement and alienation that humanity experiences in its relationship with each other and with creation has its origin in forsaking the command of the Lord God. Even placed in a perfect spot, Eden, humanity tends to listen to other voices. However, the key to the theological interpretation of the Israel that finds expression in biblical texts begins in Exodus 31:18-32: 35. In Exodus 32:4, Aaron takes gold from the people and casts into the image of calf. “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Already in the Mosaic period, the Israelites broke this commandment. Later, in the period sacral kingship, Solomon would build altars in the high places for his many wives who continued to serve foreign gods. Jeroboam would also build a calf.
Thus, when theology thinks of the unity of God, it has nothing to do with monism or fascination of the number “one.” God is the divine reality itself in its uniqueness.[3] Israel rarely engaged in direct apostasy but rather, experimented with holding to Yahweh while also mixing the gods of Canaan and other surrounding peoples.[4]
This commandment has a connection with zeal as an expression of holiness. Theologically, it relates to the transcendence and infinity of God. The holiness of Yahweh, zeal, and the first commandment come together. The experience of the holy is a primeval religious datum. We cannot deduce the concept of the holy from other human standards of value. The holy is designated the great stranger in the human world, a datum of experience that can never really be coordinated into the world in which humanity is at home. The experience of the holy is that of the wholly other. These people knew the region of the holy. If Yahweh sanctifies an object, place, day, or person, people separate it and assign it to God, for God is the source of all that is holy. People experienced the holy as a power. It was something urgent and incalculable. The holiness of all that Yahweh sanctifies derives solely from people bringing it into contact with Yahweh. The term indicates a relationship. The attempt to regulate the holy through ritual action reflects concern to not have this unpredictable power bring harm. The Old Testament expresses intensity and vehemence about holiness as it binds it directly to Yahweh. Yahweh’s holiness wants to penetrate the whole of the individual. Yahweh can receive glory in the acts of worship and in events within history. It presupposes the hidden action of Yahweh in history, though on special occasions this glory shows itself. The realm of the secular Yahweh takes up as an expression of holiness. When that happens, Yahweh’s holiness will have attained its utmost goal. Zeal suggests that God alone is worshipped, an equivalent of jealously. The intolerant claim to exclusive worship is something unique in the history of religion. Normally, worshippers had freedom to incorporate other gods into worship. The first commandment reflects the proof of saving history that Yahweh is the only God. These initial stages reflect henotheism rather than monotheism. These people gained steady recognition of the one God through their history, culminating in the witness of II Isaiah.
Therefore, it does not follow that from knowledge of the God of Israel that this God should be identical with God. This God appears to outsiders to be the local God of this people standing alongside other gods. We find here monolatry, the worship of a single God, based on the ancient concept of the jealousy of Yahweh. For the people of the covenant, no other god exists. Even to the faith awareness of Israel it was not at first self-evident that this God is the only God universally. Such an explicit proclamation awaits the time of exile and Isaiah 40ff. Therefore, this commandment establishes that the covenant between Yahweh and these people involves an exclusive covenant.[5] The motive behind ascribing the creation function of El and Baal to Yahweh is the holy zeal of Yahweh, the exclusive claim to worship, that we find in this commandment, as well as in Deuteronomy 6:14-15. This claim made it impossible to think that the God of Sinai and the historical election and leading could be different from the author of the world and its order.[6] The beginning of covenant history dated back to creation as the theologians of Israel reflected upon these matters.[7] The however here is that Israel would have shared the belief of other religions of the divine origin of creation. Yet, the ideas of the order and origin of the world may not be new, but their character changes under the influence of the experiences Israel had of the divine action in its history. This commandment is the basis for the priority Jesus gives to the imminent rule of God over all other human duties and concerns. This commandment was the motivating force behind the development of the thought of the royal rule of Yahweh in ancient Israel, along with the associated concept of the holy jealousy of the God of Israel, which we find in Exodus 20:4, 34:14, and Deuteronomy 6:14-15.[8]
I am suggesting that this commandment is a matter for our hearts. It invites us to strip away any false notions and illusions we might have regarding who we are. are we finding our identity and security in the Infinite and Eternal God, or are we finding these things in a finite and temporal thing.
Martin Luther[9] wonders what it means to have a god. For him, a god is that from whom we expect all good and to whom we take refuge in times of distress. That in whom one places one’s whole trust is god. Such confidence and faith of the heart is what one gives to God and to an idol. If the object of such faith is right, then your god is also true. Faith, or trust, or belief on the one hand, and God on the other, belong together. That upon which one sets one’s heart and puts one’s trust is one’s god. Therefore, the intention of the commandment is to require true faith and trust of the heart that settles upon the only true God. God wants us to expect every good thing from God. God wants us to cling to God in times of distress. Therefore, one must not cling to another. To trust in much money is trust in a god, Mammon. One may also trust in great skill, prudence, power, favor, friendship, and honor, yet, they also have a god. To have a god is to have something in which one places his or her trust. People place their trust in the pope, the saints, and witchcraft. One cannot have the true God by placing God in a moneybag or in a chest. One can apprehend God only through the heart and placing trust in God. God wishes us to turn away from anything outside of God and in which may place our trust. God wants us to consider God the source of help. The heart must know no other comfort or confidence than God. One must not put trust in astrology. People so readily put their trust in nothing. For Luther, the Roman Catholic mass has become an idol. Luther says in a memorable statement:
We are to trust in God alone, and look to Him and expect from Him naught but good, as from one who gives us body, life, food, drink, nourishment, health, protection, peace, and all necessaries of both temporal and eternal things. lie also preserves us from misfortune, and if any evil befall us, delivers and rescues us, so that it is God alone (as has been sufficiently said) from whom we receive all good, and by whom we are delivered from all evil.
Though we receive much good from human beings, it all comes from God, for all that exists are creatures of God. We need to take this commandment seriously, examining our hearts to be sure that we cling to God alone. If we cling to anything else for good or help, then it has become our idol.
John Calvin observes that this commandment encourages the people of God to exalt, worship, and adore the Lord alone.[10] Exalting anything else obscures the glory of the Lord. The people of God owe to the Lord adoration, trust, invocation, and thanksgiving. In adoration, one worships the Lord and brings the conscience into subjection to the Law. Trust involves rest in the Lord, considering oneself happy to be in partnership with the Lord. Invocation involves claiming the promise of divine aid at the only resource in every need. Thanksgiving involves the gratitude that ascribes to the Lord praise for the blessings we receive in this life. When we have true knowledge of the Lord, the aim of our lives is to revere and worship the Lord, enjoy divine blessings, and to come to the Lord in prayer in every difficulty. The Lord becomes the sole aim of our actions. Superstition leads us away from offering to the Lord such allegiance. Our minds need to arrive at contentment with the one and true God. We must drive away fictitious gods. God will always be the witness and spectator of the sacrilege of placing anything before the Lord as the god one has chosen. We must remember that everything we design, plan, and execute lies open to God, making mere external profession insufficient.
I offer a reflection on our priorities or that to which we give allegiance.
Here is the other side of things. God chooses us. In this commandment, we choose God. Having no other gods is our earnest response to the undivided grace of God. Faith is gratitude seeking its source. God is the one who initiates the conversation. If God had not loved enough to speak, no conversation would take place, no Israel would exist, no nation of priests, and no church. The command arises from the relationship of Israel to God as owned, called, and accountable. Although understandable in a pre-modern context, us modern persons have a tough time with obedience to an external authority. Command and obedience create a submissive response to an external authority that to which many of us modern persons do not respond. Yet, if we view the commandments as the loving guidance of God, we may be able to respond with opens minds and hearts. God created us to love God, but we become slaves to wrong choices. We desire wrongly. Freedom is not so much choice but desire. God created us as passionate beings. We rightly desire. The problem is where our desires become disordered by desiring what results in slavery.
The biggest issue in life is priorities. We acknowledge it every day, dozens of times a day. We plan to do things, we make a budget, and we must decide if we will the creams or caramels first in the box of chocolates. A farmer who had just retrieved a lost sheep was asked how sheep wander away. The farmer responded, “They just nibble themselves lost.” They go from one tuft of grass to another, until at last they have lost their way. That is what happens with life. Unless we purposely establish a structure of priorities, we will nibble away at each inconsequential tuft of decision until life is gone, and we have little idea of what has happened to it.
In a sense, priority is another name for God. When we draw up our little list of the things that matter most, that which we designate Number One is god, whether it is the true God or not. It is our governing principle, because, where we like it or not, we become like the god we worship. Some students of world religions say that people make gods in their own images. If so, the gods return the favor. We become like what we worship. We also allow this god to determine what kind of world we will have, what kind of government we will choose, what sorts of persons we will want to rule over us. We become like what we worship. That is why the ten commandments begin with our relationship to God. We would not prioritize them that way, of course. Ask the average person for the most important commandment, and he or she will likely choose the one forbidding murder, or adultery, or dishonesty. So, the commandments begin with God, not because the commandments are religious, but because we are. They begin with God because what we think about God will eventually determine what we think of ourselves of each other, and of life. All the other commandments rest upon this one. No wonder that when a thoughtful interrogator asked Jesus to name the most important commandment, he answered, in terms of the Jewish Shema, that the Lord our God is one, and that you shall the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:29-30). Jesus quoted Deuteronomy, a second statement of the law. The Lord our God is one and calls us to love. We might call this the magnificent obsession. If God be God, God should have all that we are. That is not only the essence of the first commandment; it also is its beauty and its glory. God shall have all of you. Then, with convicting logic, Jesus continued, answering a question the interrogator did not ask, that the second greatest commandment from the Holiness Code (Leviticus 19:17) is to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31). If one accepts the first statement, one cannot escape the second. To love God is to be like God, and to be like God is to love our neighbor.
The truth is that something will consume us. Something in us wants to live grandly, to give ourselves with abandonment. We had better choose passionately as to whom or what will consume us, because you and I are of such sublime importance. I am especially important to me because I am the only I that I have. After I have used up me, I have nothing left. I had better be sure that I choose wisely when I give myself up to a grand obsession. Would it not be better if I parceled out myself, if I would give God some of my devotion, and give some to sex and success, and baseball, and collecting matchbooks? Well, that is how we fritter life away. We give it up in little pieces, some of them sad absurdities, and none f them worth mentioning in the same breath with God. If life has hundreds of points, it becomes pointless. If our lives are to have a piercing quality, they will need to have a single point, a classic directness.
God is jealous because God is passionate about involvement with us. The words from God tend to be passionate because so much is at stake. God has risked much to deliver and to choose Israel. God has risked the cross to make the church. Matters between God and us are rarely small or of little consequence. This God has a passionate commitment to Israel and the church and expects passionate obedience in return. The existence of Israel and the church is concrete, visible testimony to the world that it is possible for the desires of people to be formed not by the way the world gathers people, as in race, class, and gender, but on the basis of the word of God. The church gathers on Sunday because of the call of God.
The jealousy of God toward us is a product of the love of God for us. God demands all because we are never fulfilled until we give all to God. I think of Augustine’s trenchant words: “thou hast created us for thyself, and our heart cannot be quieted till it may find repose in thee.” He knew that it is our nature to have a grand passion; but unless that passion finds itself in God, it will not be satisfied. What a measure of what we are! We declare our worth by what we worship. Is it money? Is it physical gratification? What about the aesthetic, to give ourselves to beauty? What of family and friendship and great loyalties to school, village, or country? Such devotion is magnificent as an expression of our higher calling, but it is not enough to be our calling. If we give ourselves to anything less than God, we underestimate ourselves. The writer of Genesis said that we human creatures are made of the dust of the earth, but that we are inhabited by the breath of God. How pathetic and absurd for eternal creatures like us to pour ourselves into embracing that which passes away. Giving ourselves to God in such fashion will not diminish our capacity for persons or causes or aesthetics, or even fun. We are better equipped to engage ourselves with the harmonies of life when we have found the supreme chord. We are more able to become involved in friendship and love, in creativity and grand doing, if our basic commitment is in order. To love God is not to love life less, but to grasp it with a surer hand, a more sensitive one. With God at the center of our life and vision, we can see more clearly what is good and beautiful in all the rest of life. With God at the center, we are most surely what we are really meant to be.
That is not the end of the matter. The more we give ourselves to God, the more we become like God. The more of us that God has, the more we have of God. This is the nature of relationships; if I would have more of you, I must give you more of me. What is true of our human relationships is even more magnificently true of our relationship with God.
Modern poet Phyllis McGinley says that virtue is humanity’s Mount Everest, and that those who climb highest are worth admiring. Indeed so, and more than that, they are worth emulating. If one is going to climb Everest, one must be committed to the project. Everest is more than an afternoons’ stroll! However, godliness is not so singular an adventure as is Everest. I see godly people everywhere. One thing godly people have in common is that God is the ultimate issue of their lives. God is their priority. Here is the genius of the first commandment.
Life must have a focus. If we live scattershot, we will hit nothing of consequence. Focus is not enough. The focus must be right, else we will invest our extraordinary potential in that which is, at best, trivial, and at worst, demonic. We are creatures of eternal worth, of so much worth that we can do business with the Lord God. If that is not breathtaking enough, the commandment insists that God desires out attention, because God knows how great our potential is, and how tragic it is if we invest such potential in anything less than the divine. Therefore, God gives us a commandment, that we shall have no other gods, not because God wishes to fence us in, but because God wishes to set us free, to give us opportunity to fulfill the capacity of our wondrous ordaining. God shall have all of you. You, in turn, shall be given yourself, and the wonder of fullness in God.
God knows that Israel, left to its own devices in the wilderness, is prone to reestablish the rule of Pharaoh in different forms. The question the Bible asks is, “Who is the God who is there?” Atheism is little more than the shrug of the shoulders that says something like, “I do not care what someone believes about God, as long as he is sincere.” “It does not matter so much what someone believes as long as that person lives a good life.” Disobeying the first commandment attempts to reduce God to a problem of belief rather than a call to worship.
Second
The second commandment (Exodus 20: 4-6 and Deuteronomy 5:8-10) is 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. They shall not bow down to them or worship them, for the Lord is a jealous God. The standard pre-exile idea of monolatry became inconceivable after II Isaiah and the post-exilic community established monotheism. Other gods in older texts become lifeless idols, as in II Isaiah. The result here is that the later theological perspective of verse 8 separates the original sense of movement from verse 7 directly to verses 9-10, where there was a possibility of bowing to and serving other gods. They are not to perform service or labor or to make sacrificial offerings to a deity. In Deuteronomy, since the Lord is not visible or part of the creation, it would be a perversion to create an image and worship that image. This prohibition keeps the people of the Lord from false worship. The commandment finds an echo in other passages, of course. They are not to make idols, erect carved images, or pillars, and not place figured stones in the land (Leviticus 26:1). The covenant at Shechem cursed anyone who makes an idol, casts an image, the work of an artisan, setting up in secret, all of which is abhorrent to the Lord (Deuteronomy 27:15)
Pésel has been variously translated as idol (NRSV and NIV), “graven” (RSV), “carved” (NJB), or “sculptured” (TNK) “image.” The original meaning was “a divine image carved from wood or sculpted from stone, but later cast in metal.”[11] The basic prohibition was against making physical representations of YHWH, which could lead to idolatry. Israelite worship included placement of images in the sanctuary. The cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant are mythological creatures with the body of a bull or lion, the head of a human, and the wings of an eagle. Yahweh has taken seat, like a monarch, flanked by a pair of sphinx-like creatures. In II Kings 6: 23-28 describe the cherubim in the inner shrine. The appearance of the cherubim is debated. They symbolize protection. Human faces and winged bodies did this on other temples. In Canaan, they were winged, sphinxlike creatures that support the throne of the king. A “cherub” was a mythical, composite animal, often represented with a human face, eagle wings, and the body of a lion. They were considered guardian figures. He placed two of them in the Holy of Holies. He had them carved in relief on the two sets of doors in the main building. Cherub images are attested on various ancient Near Eastern artifacts, including carved ivory panels used to decorate furniture from Samaria and on two clay cult stands from excavations at Taanach. They are also known to have been carved into the sides of the throne used by Hiram of Tyre, which is illustrated on his excavated sarcophagus. This may suggest that in the Temple as well the cherubim served as the throne of the invisible God. In Jewish tradition they came to symbolize the presence of God. In II Kings 7: 15-22, the two bronze pillars, manufactured after the completion of the Temple, lacked any structural purpose. Their function may have been symbolically decorative. Artistic reconstructions often represent them as freestanding either near the entrance of the Temple or at the front edge of the portico based on II Chronicles 3:17. The one on the right he named Jachin and the to the left he named Boaz. They may have comprised a visible prayer asking that God care either for the Temple or for the dynasty. They may also have surviving stones from the monument in Joshua 24:26-7, symbolizing the covenant. In II Kings 11:14 and 23:3, the impression was it was customary for the king to stand at the pillar for prayer or religious pronouncements. Shrine models excavated in the Levant show such free-standing pillars. In II Kings 7: 23-26, the elevated tank provided water under pressure so that the priests could wash conveniently without having to draw water from Temple cisterns. It does not indicate how water was released from the tank or how it was filled. The design of the tank, mounted on the back of twelve bulls, facing the cardinal points of the compass, may have been symbolically meaningful. The inclusion of mythical cherubs along with bulls and lions in the side frames of the stands suggests that they too conveyed some symbolic message. Bronze models of such stands have been found in excavations of Cyprus and in Israel.
All this is to suggest that the use of the arts in worship was an important part of First Temple worship. The arts involve the use of human creativity in ways that can stimulate worship of the Lord. Any finite object can become an idol if we find it our identity, security, significance, and stability. The mature view of the divine in the Old Testament is that only one God exists, and that God is Infinite and Eternal. Therefore, any finite and temporal thing can only direct human attention to God. If one elevates such an image to more than that, it is an idol for that person.
We find further discussion of this commandment in Deuteronomy. They are not to hear the words from the Lord and fear the Lord who spoke out of natural events like fire, so they heard a voice but saw no form, the Lord then delivering the Ten Commandments and had them written on stone tablets. Since they saw no form then, they are to make no image, neither male nor female, nor the likeness of any animal, nor even the likeness of any object in the heavens, for the Lord has liberated them and made them a possession of the Lord (Deuteronomy 4:9-20) Deuteronomy suggests the image is inappropriate because God’s manner of revelation is the word rather than a form discovered in nature. The image was simply not an appropriate response by Israel in worship given to Yahweh. The image failed to deal with the nature of Yahweh. It encroached upon the freedom of God to relate to the world. The self-revelation of God was not in a static image, but in the ambiguity of history. The word of the Lord can offer new revelation for current times, while an image will remain the same regardless of the historical circumstances. The commandment protects the entry of God into the sphere of human life on terms God chooses (Childs, Zimmerli, and von Rad). However, we may need to shift focus away from the self-revelation of God and toward human testimony to that revelation.
Images were only in the most exceptional cases identified with the deity concerned. The cultic images of the religions do not confuse themselves with the invisible God. They do give visibility to the specific form of deity. The deity is believed to be present in the image, but not identical with it. The oneness of God that we find here was an expression of the zeal that will not tolerate any other gods.[12] Images made no claim to give an exhaustive representation of the being of the deity. The pagan religions know as well as Israel did that deity is invisible, that it transcends all human ability to comprehend it, and that human beings cannot capture it in a material object (Childs). This did not deter them from consecrating ritual images to it. The images reflect the means through which deity chooses to reveal himself or herself, for the image is the bearer of revelation. They felt divine powers close to them. The world is like a curtain that permits people to see the divine through it. Deity became present in the image. With the presence of the deity there was at the same time given the presence of its power, for it could now become effective for people. The official worship centers for the worship of Yahweh focused on the prohibition of images, even while local centers and private worship made use of images. In official worship centers, the focus was the bare word of God rather than a cultic image. The static divine presence in an image as an object of power at the disposal of people could not reconcile itself to the nature of the revelation of Yahweh. The image reduced the freedom of Yahweh to the image. Nature was not a mode of being for Yahweh, so in one sense the gods of other people confronted believers more directly than the people devoted to Yahweh did. The hidden action of Yahweh in history kept this people in suspense as to where the divine presence would become real.
Again, in the organization of the Torah and the history of Israel, we see the breaking of this commandment. We see it especially in Exodus 32:4, which is from the story of J, where the Israelites build an image of a calf, and proclaim it as the god who brought them out of Egypt.
Joshua 24:14-24 has the theme of choosing between religious alternatives. It brings the first and second commandments together. It comes from the writer of the theological history of Israel. The basis is the gracious acts of Yahweh.[13] Joshua is framing the religious alternatives — if the Israelites are unwilling to serve Yahweh, they should “choose . . . whom you will serve” (v. 15). He leaves little doubt that monotheism as an abstract religious concept is not at issue in this passage. There is no suggestion that Joshua believed that the gods of either his religious ancestors or “the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living” were figments of their devotees’ imaginations. Most of the Hebrew Bible takes for granted the existence of other deities, and only in its later stages (e.g., Second/Third Isaiah, dating from the period of and after the Babylonian Exile of 587-539 B.C.) does the notion of other deities as human illusions come to be widespread. We need to remember, however, that the idea of the existence of divine beings distinguishable from God (e.g., angels, Satan, the second and third persons of the Trinity) remains firmly a part of both Judaism and Christianity today. See the parallel in Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (within its context), where Moses insists that they choose between life and death — to follow God’s renewed covenant or not to follow it, with corresponding consequences. Although the people declare that they are prepared to accept the responsibility of covenant fidelity to their god (vv. 16-18), Joshua remonstrates that the people do not grasp the implications of serving “a jealous God” (v. 19): they cannot serve any deity besides Yahweh. Verse 19 refers to “El the Zealous,” as early designation of God by the league. It emphasizes the identity of God as holy and zealous. “You cannot serve the Lord, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.” This is not simply ironic language or “reverse psychology,” but a reminder of the seriousness of their commitment. The result of this holy zeal of the Lord is that the destructive working of divine holiness can also turn against the elect people if it breaks free from its allegiance to God. The holiness of God carries a threat of judgment upon an apostate people. To go back on it would be more disastrous than never to have made the commitment. Similarly, the harsh statements in the NT book of Hebrews and Jesus’ own words in Luke 9:62 and his reminders in Luke to count the cost of being his disciple. God is holy, and we are to be holy — completely set apart for God’s worship and use. God is jealous and will not accept any disloyalty (parallels are frequent in Scripture between adultery and spiritual idolatry.[14] Verses 21-24, people declare allegiance in v. 21, 24, but Joshua challenges in between. Not only must they recognize Yahweh’s supremacy, but they must also “put away the foreign gods” that they had preserved from their ancestral religion or the new gods they had incorporated into their Yahwistic worship from their neighbors (v. 23). Even with the warning, the people affirm their intention to serve the Lord. They are then to (both literally and spiritually) put away any foreign gods they had and “incline their hearts to the Lord” (notice the Deuteronomy/Jeremiah/NT-like emphasis on heart-religion). And so, in verse 25, Joshua “made a covenant with the people …, and made statutes and ordinances [covenant stipulations] for them at Shechem.” The figures they possessed had become crucial in connecting them to God.
The breaking of this commandment in the sin of Jeroboam occurs as he builds a similar image. In I Kings 12:26-33, Jeroboam has a concern that the people will revert “to the house of David,” especially if they continue to go to Jerusalem to make their sacrifices to the Lord. He made two calves of gold, one for Bethel and the other for Dan. The point here, however, is that he as king is breaking the first two of the Ten Commandments. He made a festival like that of Judah. He offered sacrifices. “Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Some biblical scholars think that that the calf was to be a substitute for the Ark, and only later tradition turned it into an idol. The use of the bull shows syncretism with Canaanite religion.
The Israelite prophets focused intensely on the issue of idol worship. Jeremiah spoke strongly that the customs of the peoples are false as they cut down trees and artisans fashion it with silver and gold and make idols that look like scarecrows in the field that cannot speak or walk and can do neither good nor evil, so do not fear such gods (10:3-5). II Isaiah spoke strongly as well, referring to ironsmiths working hard and the precision of the carpenter and the work of the baker, all of whom will bow before what they have made and ask it to save them. They do not see, as if blinded and mind closed to the fraud they have made (Isaiah 44:12-20).
One final aspect of the second commandment that those who consider the Old Testament to be harsher in its judgment of humanity than is the New Testament often overlook is the last phrase of the second commandment. We often hear it quoted that the Old Testament advocates visiting the guilt of parents upon their children. It does state in the second commandment (in both the Exodus and Deuteronomy versions), that the sin of idolatry follows the sinner's descendants for three generations. I would first point out that what is often overlooked, however, is that the blessing of faithfulness to God follows the descendants of the faithful for a thousand generations. This implies that for the Old Testament God, faithfulness is remembered and rewarded for much longer than sin is remembered and punished. The Lord punishes children for the iniquity of parents to the third and fourth generations, but shows steadfast love, mercy, kindness, loyalty of action as an expectation of the covenant, to those who love the Lord, employing the technical language of treaties of the time in which love refers to the loyalty the vassal owes to the sovereign, and keep the commandments to the thousandth generation. Second, I would point out that this notion of vicarious punishment to the third or fourth generation in the Decalogue creates a problem with other Old Testament texts. It contrasts sharply with civil and criminal law that restricts punishment to the agent alone. Jeremiah 31:29-30 and Ezekiel 18 will challenge this notion of divine punishment. Deuteronomy 7:10 is bold to argue against the early version of the Decalogue at this point by stressing that the Lord is never slow and thus instantly requites with destruction those who reject the Lord.
Martin Luther says that this warning shows us how angry God is with people who put their trust in anything other than God.[15]
John Calvin gives an extended comment upon this part of the commandment.[16] The duty of the people of God is to cleave to God alone. God is jealous because the true God will not bear a partner in divinity. A simple punishment of brief duration, three or four generations, contrasts with the divine kindness to remote posterity for those who love the Lord and keep the Law. The Lord is like the husband who chooses a people for holy wedlock, having its foundation in mutual faith. The Lord is the true and faithful husband. The Lord expects faithfulness from us. We must “not prostitute our souls to Satan.” Israel often committed adultery. The Lord as the faithful husband experiences offense when the people of God prostitute themselves with rivals. Now, the punishment stated to the fourth generation seems inconsistent with Ezekiel 18:20, where the prophet says that the son will not bear the iniquity of the father. Calvin rejects the notion that the commandment refers only to temporal punishments. The commandment to him means that the curse of the Lord is upon not only the guilty individual, but also on the descendants. The guilty person experiences deprivation of the Spirit of God, and therefore the children will follow in that path. He thinks it just for God to punish the guilty in this way. He also thinks that the mercy expressed in this part of the commandment is far greater than the punishment. Yet, in neither case is there an inflexible rule, for sometimes, the children of the wicked repent, and the children of the righteous depart from the path their parents taught them. Yet, the threat and promise remain to change behavior.
As with the first commandment, this commandment invites us to consider who we are and in what we trust. Unquestionably, the focus of the commandment is that of physical representations that could lead to idolatry. Thus, in our era, a picture, a rosary, a cross, a star of David, can become idols for us if we rely upon them, as if we could not connect with God without them. If they remind us of the always-present God, they have served a worthy purpose. A place can become an idol if one attaches oneself to a specific building in a way that makes one dependent upon it for connection with God. A worship style can become an idol. A preacher can become an idol. Modern persons have left behind the physical representation of deity. Yet, we can compare the development of a worldview to the development of an idol, and thus, resistance to the command to not make an idol and escape exclusive loyalty to God.[17] Idolatry today is a subtle adoption of an organizing principle of our lives other than that which is consistent with the testimony of scripture, to which the people of the Lord are to give priority. We may bow down and serve a political ideology, a philosophical worldview, having power, wealth, or popularity, and so on. However, they as people of the Lord shall not bow down to them or serve them. Jesus (Matthew 6:24) draws a sharp distinction between serving God and “mammon,” which one can interpret as property or wealth. In this case, Jesus argues for the interpretation of the first two commandments that makes it clear that any of us can have a god or image before God that claims our loyalty.
I offer a brief reflection on the God of no place.
This commandment suggests that God has no place of residence. The less disturbed a culture is by adversity or diversity, the more fixed and codified become its core values, beliefs, and symbols. Likenesses eventually cease merely to point to a reality; they become it. This is how images become idols.
Pure egalitarianism is certainly a myth. Distinctions of habit and history are unavoidable. Life is full of valuations and judgments. Nevertheless, when such valuations are set in stone, they close the future; oppress possibility. Emblems of truth become cast in falsehood. This is another way that images become idols.
We might also reflect on the difficulty with the exclusive identification of God with one Hebrew man in first-century Palestine. Jesus was a first century Jewish rabbi, and in one sense, any other portrait of Jesus is delusion. However, faith tends to regularly recast the image into one where Jesus reflects one’s own race and culture. We come face to face with the scandal of particularity: a Jewish man who died in 30 AD in Israel who yet, according to Christianity, has universal significance for humanity.
Not many people today worry about keeping this commandment, nor do many think it has anything to say to their way of life. Yet, the world is so good and humanity has such gifts that we can delude ourselves into thinking that we are self-sufficient. Modern persons value autonomy in determining meaning, rather than discovering meaning through trust in God.
Even modern culture has a tendency toward superstition. We do not have 13th floors in buildings. Sports figures have rituals they often develop. Superstition is a small matter. If idols were nothing more than the absurdities the prophets described, they would not have been an issue. Yet, they are a danger to our perception of god. Our autonomy, far from delivering us from God, has opened us to superstition, as people in the grip of fate or luck, bombs, veneration of sexual pleasure.
One thing is sure. This commandment was fearfully serious to the pious Jews, and to the prophets who sought passionately to keep them in life. Their wanderings usually began with a graven image. In fact, Israel broke this commandment before Moses had completed delivery of the tables of stone. It was while he was receiving the commandments at Sinai that his brother Aaron and the people got together to make golden calves to take God’s place. When Israel finally settled into the land that was to be their home, it was a violation of this commandment that signaled their spiritual unfaithfulness. They were soon bowing down to Baal and Astarte, as in Judges 2.
The danger begins in that the image is something we can see. We know what God looks like. We will have a god that we can comprehend with our senses. Yet, the true God is more than we can picture. With idolatry, we restrict God so much that God becomes a lie. Michelangelo said that a finished form resided in the slab of marble already, awaiting the sculptor’s chisel to reveal it. To gaze upon his statue of David in Florence or the Pieta at the Vatican in Rome is to agree that an image is more than the stone or wood from which someone fashions it. It is to begin to imagine that the grain of the marble or the wood runs in the direction of truth, that carved symbols somehow participate in, even shape, the reality to which they point.
If idols were as helpless as the prophets said, we also must remember that idols are manageable, and we humans are always looking for a manageable god. We want a god who will always do our bidding. However, sometimes one gets the feeling that where some ancient peoples counted on their gods to increase their crops, their modern descendants expect touchdowns, home runs, and broken records. A salesperson bargains with God. When we make God nothing more than an instrument in our drive for success, we have reduced God to an image. It is easy to leave this kind of god for someone else if one gets a better offer elsewhere.
Idols make God smaller and manageable; they also make us smaller. If one bows before an image of an ox, one begins to take on that image in that the ox becomes the measure of my person. If we measure our lives by the abundance of our crops, the size of house our car, or the extent of our holdings, we are dismal creatures indeed.
Diana Eck, in Bozeman to Bararas (1993), says that the God of Israel and the church is far too exclusive in our contemporary situation. She defines God in this way: “God is our way of speaking of a Reality that cannot be encompassed by any one religious tradition, including our own.” For her, our experiences of the divine make God. The commandments are straightforward speech, basic, concrete demands. I find little esoteric, ineffable, obscure, or mystical about them. All we must do is worship in everything we say or do. Why is God so exclusive? What is a bit of idolatry among friends? Our sin is punishment in that it is painful not to be who we were created to be. False gods are so demanding. God has entrusted to us the means whereby we might faithfully worship the true God. If we fail, we also fail our children. Punishment is not a sign that God is weak. Punishment is the facts of life in lives lived without God. We are not punished for sin, but sin is punishment. When we cry out in the dark, in our lost condition, the one who answers is the one who longs to have us come home, the one whose worship is home.
Anselm said that God is that, the greater than which cannot be conceived. Just how would you make an image such a God? We may have our mental images, but God is always beyond our images. When Athanasius, says Madeline L’Engle, wrote about God, it was as though he were trying to catch hold of the whirlwind. Where can we find words to capture what we cannot really perceive?
To fill the place of God with an image is like blotting the sun out of the heavens and substituting a 15-watt bulb in its place. There is so much of God to be known, so much of the divine goodness to be released in our lives, that any limiting of God is unthinkable. The real horror of idols is not simply that they give us nothing, but that they take away even what we have.
Fundamentalists of every stripe condemn the images of others while missing the corrupting power of their own. Idolatry becomes the charge idolaters level against others in order to justify themselves. Our habit is to assign a power to images and symbols, especially those strongly associated with our own lives. However, images do not make idols. Idols take shape in our minds whenever we confuse limited things with final truth. In the Sinai wilderness, Israel hid its images in fear, but they were not forgotten. Idolatry in various forms would remain Israel’s single greatest temptation.
The second commandment ends with the ominous threat of punishment for idolatry, “to the third and fourth generation.” It appears heartless on the part of God. Yet, in a world of mutual influence, we all experience the far-reaching, consequences of the actions of others in substance abuse, violent childhood, and the tyranny of fanaticism. However, God also has steadfast love to the thousandth generation. To take seriously the interconnectedness of all things is to be not only discouraged but also heartened. I do not presume to have conquered my idols, yet neither have they conquered me.
Third
The third commandment (Exodus 20:7 and Deuteronomy 5:11) is 7 You shall not make ( תִשָּׂ֛א take, carry, lift) wrongful use of (לַשָּׁ֑וְא vain, empty) the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses (לַשָּׁ֑וְא ) his name. Rightful use of the name would be a use consistent with who the Lord is and what the Lord has done. The Lord wants this name protected and valued. To use this name in vain is to use it as if it had no value or significance. Note that it refers to the name of the Lord “your” God. It assumes that we as those who receive the commandment embrace the Lord as our God. We carry the name of the Lord with us. No one would expect those outside the covenant to respect properly the use of this name. One might expect those outside the covenant to use this name in a vain and empty way. However, those part of the covenant need to be mindful that their word and deed can show either the value of this name to us or significance it has to us. The commandment protects the name of the Lord from harm, whether by the word or deed of those who identify with the people of the Lord. The command is not just a matter of what we do with our lips, for the point is that our words and lives need to reflect the due respect, value, and significance the Lord has in our hearts. If we genuinely love the Lord with all the heart and soul, then we will honor the name of the Lord in word and deed. The point of the command was uttering an oath in which one attempted to control God through the magical use of the name, which may explain the prohibition against images as well.[18]Treating the name of the Lord emptily and vainly brings a similar dishonor as does fashioning any physical creation that in our minds we must have to experience the Lord. They shall not misuse the name of the Lord, especially to make an oath one has no intention of keeping, thereby carelessly using the divine name. An example would be, “May God do X to me unless I do Y. such an oath was dangerous and legally binding, a notorious example being Judges 11:29-40. The point is that Yahweh has entrusted the knowledge of this name to this people, and therefore the name is to receive honor. The revelation of the name to Moses stresses that Yahweh will be the name of their God forever (Exodus 3:13-15). While the Lord appeared to the Patriarchs, the Lord had not made known this name to them (Exodus 6:3). Ezekiel 20:5 stresses that the Lord became known to Israel in Egypt, with the Lord swearing, “I am the Lord your God.” II Isaiah asserts, “I am the Lord, that is my name, my glory I give to no other” (Isaiah 42:8). Yet, the Hebrew means "do not carry" the name of the Lord in vain. In other words, we are forbidden from doing evil in God's name. Only when thus understood does the rest of the Commandment make sense -- that God will not "cleanse," or forgive -- the person who does this.
Thus, the Islamist who slits an innocent's throat while shouting "Allahu Akbar" is the perfect example of the individual who carries God's name in vain and who cannot be forgiven. These people not only murder their victims, but they also murder God's name. For that reason, they do more evil than the atheist who murders.
To offer an analogy, names have associations and meanings. Your name means something to you that is valuable. If someone were to quote you and represent you as believing or standing for something that you do not, you would want to find that person and correct the person if possible. Certain people are famous enough that we associate their name with an activity. Some are infamous enough that we cannot imagine any parent naming a child with it.
To offer another analogy, a company that has a trademark will not allow the use of its symbol except under strict conditions. The Lord wants the people of the Lord to bear this name in their lives. An offering of a sacrifice of praise to God is the fruit of lips that confess the name of the Lord, and therefore, they are to offer sacrifices pleasing to God, such as doing good and sharing what they have (Hebrews 13:15-6).
The final edition of the Torah and the theological history of Israel shows in dramatic fashion that already in the Mosaic period, Israel broke this commandment. It seems a man who had an Israelite mother Shelomith, daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan and Egyptian father began fighting with an Israelite in the camp and he blasphemed the name of the Lord in a curse. In this case, uttering the name YHVH in blasphemy consists of cursing the Lord, uttering an imprecation against the Lord in which the name of the Lord is included, such as, May such-and-such befall YHVH. As the divine name is the one sacred object that can be used or misused by anyone at any time, it is a supreme sacrilege. The blasphemer is apprehended and held in custody until Moses seeks and receives an oracle from the Lord, probably by means of the urim on the breastplate of Aaron. The laying on of hands transfers to the blasphemer the guilt that the listeners have incurred by hearing the desecration of the sacred name. This guilt will be eradicated along with the offender, who is stoned as an expression of the horror of the collective community and its urgent need to be rid of the instrument of desecration. One who blasphemes deserves death. The legal decision in this case becomes a general law available for the future. One who wished harm upon Elohim would not be subject to capital punishment, but to curse in that way with YHWH is to incur such punishment. In the canonical context, this would refer to the offspring of Israelite women and Egyptian men. This establishes the legal principle that the desecration of YHWH is serious for both Israelite and resident alien (Leviticus 24:10-16, 23).
People interpreted this commandment early as swearing falsely. However, the Hebrews continued to use oaths. Though the word used had a wider range of meaning, it was not until post-biblical times that interpreters exploited this possibility. Rabbis interpreted it as making an oath in a frivolous manner. People will swear incessantly and thoughtlessly about ordinary matters where there is nothing in dispute. The word for “in vain” can mean both groundless and unreal. Is it a false oath? Is it an oath of vanity? Jeremiah seemed to interpret it as swearing falsely.
While profanity (using such words as “God” inappropriately, as in a curse) would certainly violate this commandment, the commandment more broadly opposes using God’s name in any empty or meaningless way or exploiting the holy name of God in an oath or in magical attempts to force God’s action. Along with the other commandments, will they swear falsely (Jeremiah 7:9)? Hosea refers to swearing and lying (4:2). Zechariah refers to the house of anyone who swears falsely by the name of the Lord (5:4). Acquitting, in connection with an oath or any judicial imposition, is widely attested in the Bible. Antiquity considered the false oath one of the gravest crimes.
Martin Luther notes that as the first commandment and second commandments deal with the heart, this commandment deals with the tongue. He considers this appropriate, since the first objects that spring from the heart are words. One misuses the name of God when one uses it falsehood or wrong of any kind. One misuses the name of God in making a marriage vow and then violating it. False preachers violate the word of God. One can clothe oneself in the name of God and make a show of it but know in the heart that one does not intend to speak truly. Deception is bad enough, but to do so with the cloak of the name of God increases the shame.[19]
Here is the way John Calvin interprets this commandment.[20] The people of God are to hold the name of God sacred. We must not use it “irreverently or contemptuously.” In the positive form of the commandment, we are to treat the name of God with veneration. We need to guard our minds and tongues to speak of God with reverence. We need to be mindful of divine excellence, offer proper respect to the Bible, and we must praise every work of God. However, the commandment particularly refers to oaths that offer a perverse use of the divine name. An oath is calling God to witness that what we say is true. One can do this faithfully, as in Isaiah 19:18 and 65:16, as well as Jeremiah 12:16. Offering such an oath calls us to venerate the Lord. When human testimony fails, we appeal to God as witness. Making an oath is a form of worship of the Lord. We insult the Lord if we make an oath falsely, and God will judge for it. We also dishonor the Lord if the oath is superfluous. Introducing the name of God frivolously in daily conversation is something the people of God must avoid. Calvin views what he has said as a description of the moderate use of oaths. He rejects the Anabaptists of his day, who condemn all oaths, based upon Matthew 5:34 and James 5:12. In their interpretation, according to Calvin, the Son opposes the Father who gave this commandment. Calvin thinks that Jesus wanted to restore the true meaning of oaths, thereby condemning oaths that transgressed this commandment. Yet, Jesus still affirms oaths authorized by this commandment. Jesus also rejects the subtle approaches to oaths that spare the name of the Lord, but still abuse the nature of taking an oath. An example would be, “By the name of the king.” Paul himself made an oath in Romans 1:9 and II Corinthians 1:23. Calvin accepts the occasion of oaths required by public officials in court. For Calvin, the people of God need to regulate their oaths, so that they testify to the glory of God and promote the edification of others.
According to Matthew 26:57-68, religious leaders accused Jesus of blasphemy. The origin of this may be claiming messiahship, but it could also have its origin in his statements against the Temple. In either case, if that was the accusation, it would be in accord with the Old Testament that such person must die.
I offer a reflection on naming life or the act of proper naming. James Russell Lowell, “Let us speak plain: there is more force in names than most people dream of.” Romeo and Juliet 2.2.43, “What’s in a name?”
The Hebrews already knew God by many names. Shaddai, means “the Mountain One,” and came from Mesopotamia. El means “the Mighty One,” and came from Canaan. El Shaddai means “God Almighty,” and became the name the Patriarchs used. The God of the Hebrews was a God of intimate relationship. God is a divine shepherd who leads the flock into plenitude and safety, as in Psalm 23. God is the hidden head of every household. God is a faithful partner in a binding covenant. In time, these attributes issued in a new name, Yahweh, “I am who I am.” The God who will not have an image refuses to be pinned down by a name. God is who God is, will be who God will be. The power in this name is God’s alone to wield. It is always a gift, never a possession, delivered on wings of grace. The Bible does not condemn the use of the name of God, only its abuse, in invocation to justify evil, which we find difficult to define. The mere mention of some names can strike fear: Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Jack the Ripper. The mention of other names bring gladness: Mother Teresa, Mohandas Gandhi, Saint Francis. Sometimes a name holds the power of life and death. Sometimes, that name is Jesus.
Many people use the name of God without thinking about God. “O God, was that embarrassing or what?” “God, did I ever feel silly! I will never forgive myself.” “I will never forgive him! God!” People carry on this conversation between this God and each other all the time. However, the true God knows us as we know ourselves, and then some more. The true God loves us anyway. The God who forgives what others cannot. The God who wipes tears way. When we use the name of God in this way in our common language, we do not have this God in mind. Careless talk of God is a strategy for skirting dealing with matters of meaning and purpose. The more we use the name of God in this common language way, the emptier of meaning God becomes. We can remain safe and alone, on an island.
An increasingly serious form of misusing the name of the Lord is in political discourse. When someone treats their progressive ideology as simply what is compassionate and just and claims that Jesus would act as any good progressive would act, one is taking the name of the Lord in vain. One is refusing to even identify their political beliefs as a left-wing ideology, while freely labeling anyone who disagrees as a right-wing ideologue. One can paint one’s opponent as a fascist while having a popular President Obama out of office practicing fascist techniques like physical intimidation in the streets (antifa and BLM) and weaponizing government agencies like the FBI, CIA, and DOJ against your political opponents. With a new administration, jailing political opponents, justifying it in the name of defending democracy, is a tactic of tyranny. Religious leaders who have identified themselves with the left-wing ideological communion and are silent regarding the use of coercion by their own people have not carried the name of the Lord well into the political realm. They have misused the name of the Lord. Someone could treat a conservative political ideology in a way that claimed their vision of government is the only one that Jesus would endorse. Historically, the movement organized by Jerry Falwell would come close to this. However, much closer is the movement Christian Reconstructionism, a small but dedicated movement of reactionaries, a term most of them own gladly, that desire the institution of biblical law in America.
Fourth
Of interest here is that the fourth commandment acts a bridge from the focus upon giving due honor to the Lord that we have in the first three commandments and responsibilities to our neighbors in commandments 5-10. It encourages us to have a part of the time we have received from the Lord as a gift and dedicate or offer a portion of our time to the Lord. It belongs to the Lord in a way other times do not. We turn our attention from the work of daily life and to remembering who the Lord is what the Lord has done. Thus, it is as much about the nature of human work as it is about devoting time to the Lord. Further, while the focus of the biblical text is upon observance of a specific day, the Jewish Sabbath being from Friday night until Saturday night, our modern focus needs to be on maintaining the rhythm of work and rest, with rest encompassing reflection upon who the Lord is what the Lord has done.
The fourth commandment (Exodus: 20: 8-11 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15) says 8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord for their children, slaves, and livestock. In the Holiness Code, they are to keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath was a day of rest for humans and animals as well as a time of worship. Sabbath observance is important in Old Testament faith and was a special distinctive for the Israelites during the captivity in Babylon. A habit of rest is of equal importance as respect for one’s parents and avoiding the worship of idols. They understood the need for regular times of pause, of peaceful reflection on the Lord. It was a time of rest, reflection, and replenishing. As readers today, we might sense that the frenzied pace that characterizes contemporary life can hamper spiritual growth. Times of sabbath are as important today as they were for ancient Israel. The Sabbath is part of the sacred calendar as understood in the earliest part of the P Document. It belongs to the Lord and is not to be treated as common. It involved cessation from work, for engaging in daily activity or labor would amount to the desecration of the holy. It also involved sacrifices observed by the priests. Here is a special occasion dedicated by the Lord. The Lord receives worship by the priests and in the tabernacle/temple, in a manner exceeding the daily routine.
In Exodus, the reason for the Sabbath is that the Lord created in six days and rested on the seventh. The work of the Lord begins with observing the presence of chaos (Genesis 1:1-2) and then speaking, bringing order out of the chaos in the six days of work, resting on the seventh day. This suggests that our lives will be increasingly chaotic without that rhythm of work and rest. In our lives, the difference between order and chaos is where we put the rests. Christians grant that the corruption of creation by humanity is obvious, but the keeping of Torah and especially the Sabbath had the purpose of upholding the original order of creation. The Christian view goes beyond this by viewing the coming of Christ as the completion of creation that overcomes all the corruption that has come into it. Therefore, Christian theology does not need to insist upon the original perfection of creation.[21] In the Priestly tradition as presented in the Holiness Code, God established the Sabbath at creation, but it was not implemented the formation of a people and the Tabernacle is ready to be erected, the worship of the Lord inaugurated there. The Sabbath principle is well established in ancient Israel. It is humanitarian in bringing rest for humans and animals and it is theological as a time reserved for the worship of the Lord. This principle is basic to the remainder of the Holiness Code, for the connection it makes between rest and worship is an important one. As we consider the pace of contemporary life, it is a challenging one. A chaotic and overextended daily life can be hazardous to spiritual development. However, we should note that this priestly tradition says the work of the Lord in creation sets the example as to how human beings are to be. The Lord worked six days and on the seventh day rested. This implies completion of the work in six days, with the Lord pausing to enjoy what the work the Lord had done. I am suggesting that we need that time of pausing and enjoying what we have accomplished as well. For as long as we have life, our work is never done. Yet, we are to get into the rhythm of working hard and then resting and enjoying. We have done what we can, so we can rest in the confidence that the Lord will receive work and bless it. We have done our part, and now we entrust our work to the Lord.
In Deuteronomy, they are to remember that they were slaves in Egypt, the Lord delivered them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Further, they are to revere the Sabbath (Holiness Code in Leviticus 19:3). The fourth commandment is the positive command to remember the Sabbath, leaving one day undisturbed by any use for the benefit of people, for it belongs to God and sets a standard undefiled by any human business. Sabbath allows identification with the Lord in worship and identification with those in society most in need of rest. Here is the most substantial inconsistency with the presentation of the decalogue, for Exodus refers to creation and God resting on the seventh day. Deuteronomy often emphasizes the exodus as a central motivation for religious and social practices, though how and why the Sabbath might be connected to the exodus is open to interpretation. One way to think of it is that we need this pause or rest in our lives to remember what the Lord has done to liberate, heal, and provide guidance for us individually, as communities of faith, and even as a nation.
The Torah and the theological history of Israel make it clear in a dramatic little story that the Israelites in the Mosaic period broke this commandment. They found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Those finding him brought him to Moses, Aaron, and the congregation. The Lord told Moses to put the man to death by stoning him outside the camp, and the congregation did as the Lord commanded (Numbers 15:32-36). I again point out that the Lord is the source of this violence. The threat of divine punishment strengthens the social cohesion the ritual renewal of the covenant intends.
Sabbath suggests that one day become undisturbed by any use for the benefit of people, for it belongs to God and sets a standard undefiled by any human business. The text does not mention a cultic celebration of any sort on this day. One might assume that they celebrated by abstaining demonstratively from productive labor, and symbolically handing the day back to God. Mesopotamia and Greece had days they did not work. However, the reason was because they considered the day unlucky. They also had a connection with the phases of the moon.
Israel considered Sabbath a day of joy and pleasure, a day of delight and treated with honor, not a day of abstinence and asceticism. They were to stop pursuing their personal interest or affairs (Isaiah 58:13). Sabbath is a time to identify with the creator and to identify with the slave and servant in need of rest.
Martin Luther says that God gave the commandment for the bodily needs of the common people, those who have worked hard during the week and now receive refreshment. We also receive a day in which to offer praise to God and receive instruction. Since evil is already to take residence in the heart, we need the Word of God in the heart, the lips, and ears. If the heart is idle, the devil will enter. The Word always bears fruit, for it awakens new understandings, pleasure, devoutness, pure hearts, and pure thoughts. These words are creative and living words.[22]
John Calvin has the following observations on this commandment.[23] In ceasing our work, we are to meditate on the reign of God. Yet, since Jesus has said things against Sabbath observance, we need to approach this commandment differently. First, Sabbath is a type for spiritual rest, allowing God to work in them. Second, we need a stated day to hear the Law and perform religious rites, meditate upon the works of God, and thus have training in piety. Third, servants and those who work under the authority of others should have a day of rest from their labor.
This commandment invites a reappraisal of work and leisure that is both theological and practical. To heed it is to be set free from the twin slavery of worshipping our own deeds and abusing the work of others and set free for the joy of collective effort and shared success. It is to link arms with the creative impulse of the cosmos.
Christians in their history have turned Sabbath into a matter of controversy rather than exquisite gift. The New England Puritans, often cited for the distortion of the Sabbath through the strict enforcement of blue laws and the like, defined salvation as falling in love with God. Love of God, love of neighbor, love of music and beauty, love of life itself, these things touch the core of the meaning of Sabbath. They are what make us human. The Sabbath does not mean that all is complete and novelty ends. The word rest implies that work is normative in our lives.
Abraham Heschel makes the point that Sabbath demonstrates the holiness of time. God considered time as holy before God considered a place as holy. Time is the essential gift of God to humanity, for without it, humanity does not exist. Sabbath is about God and time, in that God does not move above time, but in time.
Karl Barth makes the holy day part of the ethics he derives from creation. It becomes part of his spiritual guidance to those who accept God as their creator and seek to lead a life considering that faith.[24]For him, to be a human being means to live in responsibility before God. The command of God claims this responsibility from humanity. The ethical event will always be the claim, decision, and judgment of God. In this respect, the good and evil in human actions will always reveal themselves. He wants first to consider the thing that God wants from human beings in relationship to God under the concept of the commanded holy day. In this concept, God claims the whole time of humanity, and therefore a special part of time. The concern of the Sabbath commandment is with that human action that consists in rest from personal work and therefore in readiness for the Gospel. By demanding human abstention and resting from personal work, the Sabbath explains that that commanding God who has created humanity, as well as enabled and commissioned humanity to personal work, is the God who is gracious to humanity in Jesus Christ. Thus, it points humanity away from everything that human beings can achieve and back to what God is for humanity and will do for humanity. The command to celebrate the Sabbath claims from humanity that which because of human self-understanding humanity can understand only as a sacrifice of its human nature and existence, and against which humanity can really only rebel as life rebels against death. God takes the case of humanity into divine hands and therefore out of those of humanity. The Sabbath commandment demands the faith in God that brings about the renunciation of humanity, its renunciation of itself, of all that humanity thinks, wills, effects, and achieves.
For Barth, the Sabbath has two benefits. It makes humanity free from itself and therefore free for itself in a distinct way, absolving human beings temporarily from their work. It makes humanity free for God in the sense of an opportunity to hear the Word of God. Without rest from work and participation in divine service, we cannot obey the Sabbath commandment. The Sabbath commandment can have its ground in the necessities of physical, psychological, or social hygiene, and therefore set on a humanitarian basis. The Sabbath day is also the establishment and victory of a well-founded law of life and freedom. To observe the holy day means to keep oneself free for participation in the praise, worship, witness, and proclamation of God in the congregation, in common thanksgiving and intercession. The blessing and profit of the holy day depend also on this positive use of its freedom. Its observance means resting, of course, but in the more positive sense, it means celebrating of a festival. This festival is the divine service of the congregation.
He concludes with four groups of questions. First, the holy day does not belong to humanity, but to God. We must not treat the day as if it belongs to us. Second, the meaning of Sunday freedom is joy in the celebration of a feast. Yet, part of that celebration, may include recreation in free work, which can become a liberating activity. Third, the holy day is the gift of God to humanity in relationship to others. Fourth, on the Christian interpretation, the holy day is not the last day of the week, but the first.
In one way of reading the New Testament, this commandment does not fare well. Mark tells us several stories that suggest Jesus had an issue with the leaders of his day regarding the Sabbath. Jesus heals the mother-in-law of Peter on the Sabbath (Mark 1:29-31), his disciples “work” on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28), he heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (3:1-6). Further, Paul in Romans 14:1-12 discusses people who honor one day better than others, while others honor all days the same. The point is a discussion of Jewish holy days and Sabbath days. It seems both Jesus and Paul were willing to treat this commandment in a separate way than the commonly accepted practice in their day among their fellow Jews.
I offer a reflection: And the Beat Goes On. An old Jewish saying says, “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”
Slowly, desert life takes on a rhythm. It is Shabbat, the Sabbath rest, which brings order to this wilderness. Every seventh day, the Hebrews hear again that they are precious in God’s sight. Keeping Shabbat, these former slaves resist thinking of themselves or others as objects, instruments, or means to other ends. On the Sabbath, the Hebrew ceases to be nomadic wanderers, blown about like bits of sand. Now they are a people, a priestly nation, the Israel of God. Keep the Sabbath because God does. The implication is powerful. It is in God’s deepest nature to rest, to bask in the loveliness of what is.
Sabbath law addresses our relationship with others in the world, specifically our penchant for treating God’s creatures as objects instead of subjects, to exploit their instrumental value for selfish ends. In answer to this tendency, Sabbath law asserts the intrinsic worth of all creation. “And God saw that it was good.”
This commandment invites a reappraisal of work and leisure that is both theological and practical. To heed it is to be set free from the twin slavery of worshipping our own deeds and abusing the work of others and set free for the joy of collective effort and shared success. It is to link arms with the creative impulse of the cosmos.
The New England Puritans, often cited for the distortion of the Sabbath through the strict enforcement of blue laws and the like, defined salvation as falling in love with God. Love of God, love of neighbor, love of music and beauty, love of life itself, these things touch the core of the meaning of Sabbath. They are what make us human. The Sabbath does not mean that all is complete, and novelty ends. The word rest implies that work is normative in our lives.
The practice of Sabbath assumes many forms. Some of us attend public worship, eager to share with others a message of grace that never grows tiresome. Others kneel in prayer right where they are. Still others simply assume a posture of rest that invites thanksgiving for the gifts of a day, or a week, or a lifetime. Tying all these activities together is a spirit of gratitude that opens like a window to the awesome presence of God. Sabbath is a formative expression of love for God and for neighbor. It is a practiced belief in God’s goodness, a willingness to stop our busy acquisition of personal well-being to receive it from the Source.
Rest, relaxation, and release are not as natural as we think. “I will strive hard to relax,” we often say. We are scrappers, programmed to compete and prevail. The instinct of ceaseless hunting and gathering is embedded in our genes. Sociologists identify a hurried childhood as a problem in America. To keep Sabbath is to surrender, to fall back into loving arms, assured of their will to embrace you. Keeping Sabbath is acknowledging that those loving arms belong to God.
Fifth
The fifth commandment (Exodus 20: 12 and Deuteronomy 5:16) is 12 Honor כַּבֵּ֥ד your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. In a difference with Exodus, Deuteronomy expands on the command, saying a reason to honor parents is so that it may fare well for them in the land, typical of exhortations to obedience in Deuteronomy. The grammatical perspective continues the shift noted in verse 12: as the Lord your God has commanded you, a shift that occurs in contemporary royal inscriptions as well. The theory that the Decalogue arose from clan support has its biggest support here. Parents are the visible representation of God for the exerting of God’s authority. Antiquity organized itself around the extended family. They lived in settled community with their wives and children. In that setting, one could slight the authority of parents, especially of the aged ones. Antiquity considered filial responsibilities important for maintaining social order. The positive formulation encompasses all the possible filial duties. It refers to reverence and to physical care. The positive framing of the commandment expands the meaning. It receives a promise. In Deuteronomy, the promise in this commandment becomes the promise that follows the obedience of all the commands. Paul extends this notion of honoring parents into the Hellenistic social network of the household. We see this in Colossians 3:18-4:1 and Ephesians 5:21-6:9. In Romans 1:30, as part of his list of vices to avoid, Paul refers to those who are rebellious toward parents as living a life of dishonor. Every parent is flawed, and children often expose them. Yet, they are the reason we as their children are here. Theologically, God gave us the gift of life through them. We lead an honorable life when we honor them. We listen to them, we learn from them, and we forgive them.
Paul urges wives to be subject to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-4; Colossians 3:18), but he also urges husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25-33; Colossians 3:19), a notable addition, given that proverbs does not have direct admonitions toward the husband.
Wife
In a passage difficult to translate, following the Greek text, a gracious, kindhearted woman gets honor, but she who hates virtue or is ruthless is covered with shame, but following the Hebrew, a ruthless man gains only wealth, insightfully giving an example that honor and respect are more valuable than material wealth (11:16). A good, capable wife, a wife of noble character, like Ruth, whom the community thought of as worthy (Ruth 3:11) and described in Proverbs 3:10-31) is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones (12:4). The wise woman builds her house, being a source of strength and an example of diligence to those in her household, as does wisdom in 9:1 and as does the valiant woman of 31:10-31, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands (14:1). The next few proverbs refer to the contentious or quarrelsome wife, although we need to remember that anyone who stirs up dissension is condemned throughout these proverbs. Like a gold ring in the snout of a pig is a lovely, beautiful woman without good sense or lacking in discretion, showing that beauty, while a fine thing, becomes ludicrous when attached to foolishness (11:22). It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a spacious house shared with a quarrelsome, contentious wife (21:9, 25:24). It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome, contentious, vexatious, irritating, and fretful wife (21:19). A continual dripping on a rainy day and a contentious, quarrelsome, nagging wife are alike, like the insight in 19:13b, for to restrain her is to try to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in the right hand (27:15-16).
Although wisdom suggests that there are exceptions, wisdom suggests that marriage is a blessing. A man who finds a wife finds happiness and a good thing, obtaining favor from the Lord (18:22 C). In an analogous saying, if you are a man of standing, you should found your household and love your wife at home as is fitting, making her heart glad as long as you live, for she is a profitable field for her lord, so let her heart be soothed through what may accrue to you, for it means keeping her long in your house (The Instruction of the Vizier Ptah-Hotep, p. 236). House and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent or efficient wife is from the Lord (19:14 C).
Children
One aspect of social relationships is within the family. This was a culture that disposed of daughters if they did not fit with the needs of the family. It was also a time of what we would consider as child marriages, as marriage occurred early in life. The loosening of family times that occurs in the modern era and continues into the present has a positive dimension in expanding individual freedom. However, such loosening runs the risk of disregarding the meaning and significance people have found within the marriage bond.[25]
Parents and children have never had an easy relationship. Twisted Sister (1984) had a national anthem that one could apply to any authority figure, but clearly had application to parents for many young people.
We've got the right to choose and there ain't no way we'll lose it
This is our life, this is our song
We'll fight the powers that be just, don't pick our destiny 'cause
You don't know us, you don't belong
Oh, you're so condescending, your gall is never ending
We don't want nothing, not a thing, from you
Your life is trite and jaded, boring and confiscated
If that's your best, your best won't do
We're not gonna take it
No, we ain't gonna take it
We're not gonna take it anymore
The thirst for independence and freedom is strong. Authority implies a hierarchy, and our modern and complex culture distrusts both. We are doing so at increasingly initial stages of life. While many parents do not have worthy traditions to pass to their children, and many children will need to break with their parents to pursue their best self, this does not negate the value and wisdom of listening to what our elders must teach us. We find wisdom in discerning where in our lives we need to heed parents and where we need to chart a different course.
Obedience to parents is part of the Ten Commandments, of course. Here, it becomes wise for children to listen to their parents. These proverbs focus on children who allow parents to guide and instruct them. They enquire about what has happened and what obtains in Israel, are ready to accept the answers of parents and in so doing allow themselves to be instructed by parents in the way of life in which alone Israel both present and future can be Israel. Such children honor parents and treat them with the respect that is their due.[26] Paul urges children to obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right, sighting the commandment to honor parents as the first commandment with a promise attached, but he also urges fathers not to provoke their children to anger, but instruct and discipline them (Ephesians 6:1-4; Colossians 3:20-21).
Those who trouble their households will inherit wind, inheriting nothing, and the fool will be servant to the wise, indicating the family servant will be better off than such a child (11:29). Train children in the right way, the way one should go, the way of wisdom, the way suitable to the character of the child, and when old, they will not swerve or stray (22:6), a saying we should not understand as an assured promise or law but as an observation as to what is usually true. A stupid or foolish child is disaster, ruin, or calamity to father (19:13a). Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, for living long enough to see one’s grandchildren is a gift, and the glory or pride of children is their parents (17:6). Be wise, my child, and make my heart glad, so that I may answer whoever insults, reproaches, or taunts me, for a wise or intelligent child gives the father something to brag about when he is being treated with contempt, for such a child is a powerful testimony for the father (27:11). Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them (13:24), pointing to the paradox of parenting, that firmness that arises from love is more beneficial than is leniency, for such leniency may not look like hatred, but it is. The Words of Ahiqar urge parents not to withhold from your child the rod, else you will not be able to save your child from wickedness. Observing a paradox, discipline your children, for in your discipline there is hope for your children, for you should not be lax in your discipline, and do not set your heart on their death or destruction, for your children need your discipline, or do not get so angry as to kill the child (19:18). The Words of Ahiqar say that if I smite you, my child, you will not die, but if I leave you to your own heart you will not live. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to raise itself is a disgrace to the mother (29:15). Discipline, correct, teach, or train your children, and they will give you rest or peace of mind and they will give delight to your heart or soul, for they will care for you when you are old (29:17). Here is a reminder that the ancient household was a social welfare network, for you trained your children in wisdom and skill, and they care for you when you no longer can do so. The Instruction of the Vizier Ptah-Hotep observes that if a child accepts what the father says, no project of the child miscarries. A wise child listens to the discipline from the father, but a scoffer or mocker does not listen to rebuke (13:1). A fool despises or spurns the instruction or discipline of a parent, but the one who heeds correction, admonition or reproof is prudent (15:5). Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far away (22:15). A wise child makes a happy, glad, joyful father but a foolish child is the grief or sorrow of a mother and brings her humiliation (10:1, 15:20). In a similar thought, foolish children are a grief or vexation to their father, and bitterness or heartache to her who bore them (17:25). A child who loves wisdom makes a parent joyful and glad, but to keep company with prostitutes is to squander one’s substance or wealth (29:3), as Jesus said in the parable of the prodigal son, where the son wasted his property on riotous living (Luke 15:13). The one who begets a fool gets trouble, doing so to one’s own grief, and the parent of a fool has no joy (17:21). The Words of Ahiqar state that whoever takes no pride in the names of father and mother, may the sun not shine upon them, for they are wicked. Those who ill-treat, do violence to or plunder and rob their faither and drive out, chase away or puts to flight their mother are children who cause shame and bring reproach and are thus worthless and depraved (19:26). Emphasizing the impact upon the community, anyone who robs father or mother and says, “That is no crime,” is partner and companion to thugs and vandals (28:24).
We discover our freedom in our fellowship with others. This freedom begins for us within the family relationship and the respect children have for their parents. Obedience to parents is part of the Ten Commandments. In the wisdom tradition, it is wise for children to listen to their parents, receiving guidance and instruction from them, receiving instruction in the way of life in Israel. Children are to honor their parents and treat them with the respect that is their due.[27] Those who keep the law or instruction are wise and intelligent children while companions of gluttons, guilty of immoral and self-indulgent behavior, shame their parents (28:7 C).
The Torah and the theological history of Israel show that Israel broke this command as well. If a stubborn and rebellious son disobeys parents, they are to bring him to the elders at the gate of the town and declare him to be stubborn and rebellious, that he is a glutton and a drunkard (Deuteronomy 21:18-20). It receives attention in several places in the covenant Israel had with the Lord. Whoever strikes (Exodus 21:15) or curses (Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9) parents shall be put to death. Children are to revere their parents (Leviticus 19:3).
The powerful story of Absalom in II Samuel 13-19 relates his disobedience to his father, David. It also shows the inability of David to parent Absalom. It has terrible ramifications for the kingdom of David.
Jesus had an interesting discussion with some Pharisees regarding this commandment. In Mark 7:9-13, consistent with the typically sharp replies of Jesus we find the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus asked why they break the commandment of God for the sake of their tradition. The response of Jesus criticizes the scribes for breaking God’s commandments by creating a tradition that permitted them to get around the intent of the Law. The intent of the Law, and especially the Ten Commandments, is to guide us in seeing ourselves truly. In this case, the example is the fifth commandment concerning honoring father and mother. He points out that another law says that whoever speaks evil of father or mother must die. Yet, their tradition says that children can give “support” to God, thereby freeing them from honoring parents. Thus, for the sake of their tradition, they void the word of God. In this case, Jesus is inviting them to distinguish between the sacred text and the tradition that had gathered around it, encouraging them to place the sacred text above that tradition. However, Jesus presents the Pharisees as obedient to the law, but they are ungrateful children who manipulated the law to deprive their aging parents of the real honor they deserved. Once dedicating certain assets to God, they did not have to use them to support their parents in their old age. This was a serious charge, using the law to serve their own private ends, which included avoiding the legitimate claims of aging parents. Honoring parents is not a matter of external obedience but is concerns what is in our hearts.
While owing honor to parents, the New Testament relativizes this commandment in an important way. Jesus honored his parents. Yet, he also talked of hating parents, leaving them, to follow him in Luke 14:26. He says his family is those who do the will of God in Luke 8:19-21. In Luke 9:57-62, the rule of God is to have priority over family relationships. However, in saying this, Jesus was only saying what his Scripture taught him, that God is the final arbiter of life. We need to remember that in the missionary situation of these first Christians, they often had to urge people to place priority on the rule of God rather than their obedience to their family. Sadly, people in our time often must do so as well. This commandment finds itself relativized, we would say today, when we give the rule of God priority.
However, the honor due to parents is not in conflict with the first commandment to have no other gods. In fact, this commandment receives its proper place because of the first commandment.[28] It can relate to receiving the promise and life promised by God. It can also lead us to respect elders in general. The Reformation also reflected upon this commandment as respect for human authority in general.[29]
We honor the honorable. For much of human history, the passing of power from one generation to the next has been problematic at best. Embedded in the human psyche is a sense of entitlement that accompanies one’s coming of age. To honor, kabed means to give weight to. It has less to do with obeying than with taking seriously. Children honor parents by entrusting to them their fundamental sense of security and well-being. There is no greater honor that one person can offer to another. When parents fail to be honorable, they violate that trust.
The family is not a sanctuary cut off from the rest of society, not a secluded preserve, but a training ground for life in community, in village or clan or tribe. If there is to be a vigorous community for children to join, the family must also provide the Practice Hall for adults as well, a place where men and women perform the ceremonies of mutual aid, amuse and challenge one another, share comfort and love. By all these measures, a good family is one that encourages the full flowering of parents; that cherishes grandparents as carriers of wisdom; that nourishes children in body and mind and soul and prepares them to enter the world as responsible and competent adults.[30]
We live in a time when respect for parents has been emptied of the fullness it meant in ancient cultures and throughout much of the modern period. The household was an extended family of biologically related, as well as slaves and their families, that provide a social and economic stability for most cultures in the ancient world. The modern world that prizes individuality and encouraging the departure from home as a sign of young adult status would be strange to the ancient world. The nihilistic response to birth is to say something like: “I did not ask to be born. By what right has anyone thrust life upon me?” The notion of being cast or thrown into life has a dimension of truth in it, but it lacks an appreciation for the gifted quality of life. If you are only thrown into existence, your estrangement from your parents has already begun. This refusal of the gift your parents have given you has a spiritual quality to it. You can view your relationship with your parents in the objective manner of the scientist. Their genes simply wanted to reproduce. Your parents are filling their societal function. Yet, to travel this path is to run the risk of being without parents. Yet, you will attach yourself to someone who will become your parent. Children are disavowing their parents by their acceptance of ideologies that thrive upon that alienation. They do this through generational arrogance, assuming that former generations were blind to the truths the present generation thinks it seeks so clearly. Youth can develop an abstraction of the generation of their parents that will only lead to further estrangement. Every generation has its struggles. The ideology will be happy to provide the guidance you would normally receive from parents. Adoptive parents are a powerful example that parents do not adopt this role simply because of a genetic drive. Something else is at work in parenting that contains a mysterious and spiritual quality. You are not simply an object in the hope. Your parents are “present” to you. You can be “present” to them. I am exempting abusive parents in this discussion. When someone is truly “present” to the other, the two bring out the best in each other, allowing each other to become better individuals because of their meeting. Such an experience of presence happens in family. Of course, the family is not perfect. You will have psychological and emotional hurdles to overcome because of the imperfections of your family. Such experiences of the giftedness of your presence and the sense of thrownness into life will be part of your life as you leave home and chart course. You will experience the emergence of the uniqueness of “you” out of these intimate relations of family. Your “self” emerges from the intersubjective experience of family. It has a mysterious and spiritual quality. “I am,” we can assert with humility and wonder. Yes, “you” are here and “you” are now, in all that giftedness and random thrownness of this life. You will discover further dimensions of yourself as you leave make friends, involve yourself in other organizations, leave home, form beliefs and values, develop skills, work with and for others, have others serve you, and form your home.[31]
Woodrow Wilson said, "The use of the university is to make young men as unlike their fathers as possible." Especially with the rise of Marxism as an intellectual path toward alienation from the founding of America, capitalism, and the values of family, much of academic life at major universities has sought to fulfill the vision of President Wilson. One path toward destroying a nation is to undermine respect for parents, respect for family values, and respect for the founding of the nation. An alienating critique of culture will lead to the struggle over the only thing that will matter – power.
Commandments 6-10
Sixth
The sixth commandment (Exodus 20: 13 and Deuteronomy 5:17, but also Exodus 21:12, Leviticus 24:17, Deuteronomy 27:24, and a prohibition to hate in Leviticus 17:17-18, Numbers 35:30-34, Deuteronomy 19:11-13, and sanctity of life in Genesis 9:6) is 13 You shall not murder. Stated negatively, the commandment establishes a limit. Do not cross this line. However, let us consider putting the commandment in the form of the fifth commandment, had been “Honor life.” The effect is different, for now, it stimulates some creative thought as to how we will do that in our lives and culture. It frees us for valuing life. Respect for life is freeing, connecting us to the living God who values life.
We must not tire of life. We must battle sickness as a messenger of death. We must have joy in life, for joy is the simplest form of gratitude. To value life is to develop a life of character. It suggests the need for the protection of life. Human life is not absolute. In general, abortion would be wrong, but it may be allowable in narrow circumstances. Euthanasia would fall under the same restriction. We have the right to self-defense for the same reason. We ought to question capital punishment for the same reason. As with the Old Testament, war is an exception to the command to protect life. The life God has given is only for God to take away.[32]
In any case, by the 8th century BC, the verb carried the meaning of intentional killing, murder, while earlier it could have included unintentional killing. It may refer to illegal killing inimical to the community. It protected the life of the Israelite from illegal and impermissible violence. It is formulated in the most absolute manner to include any possible object, any human being, including suicide. Clearly, this commandment had its restrictions within the Old Testament, as God authorized killing in warfare and in many judicial acts of stoning people to death.
The Hebrew slaves in Egypt live under a murderous cloud. Moses is already a murderer. Suffering and death set the people of God free. Following the directive from God, they practice holy war. No prisoners. No spoils. All must die. The slaves may not become the masters of others, nor may they grow fat on their bounty. The change of residency must be clean. Consequently, it is even more murderous. This contains an eerie logic that we will never puzzle out.
Old Testament law made wide provision for the death penalty. Capital punishment covered such offenses as kidnapping, blasphemy, idolatry, witchcraft, adultery, rape, incest, bearing false witness in death penalty cases, and cursing or striking a parent. Capital trials allowed no circumstantial evidence. They required at least two witnesses who had observed that the crime was premeditated, was carried out in hate, and involved a deadly weapon. If, after all this, the criminal was condemned to death by stoning, these same witnesses were required to cast the first stones.
One can also see this emphasis of this commandment in other passages. Whoever hits a person in a way that results in their death shall be put to death (Exodus 21:12). Anyone who murders shall be put to death (Leviticus 24:17). Anyone who strikes down someone in secret receives a curse (Deuteronomy 27:24). Some passages include hate, reproving, taking out vengeance, or bearing a grudge against a neighbor (Leviticus 19:17-18). The application of capital punishment for murder requires the testimony of two or more witnesses. In the case of murder, there is no ransom possibility, for the murderer must die (Numbers 35:30-34). If the disruption of relationship is so severe that one lies in wait for another and kills him, the murderer must die, and the city of refuge is not a possibility (Deuteronomy 19:11-13). Behind the prohibition is the sanctity of life, for each person is made in the image of God (Genesis 9:6).
The Torah and the theological history of Israel find the breaking of this commandment in the Tribal Federation period in the startling story of Judges 19-20. It offers an account of the Levite who cut up his concubine and set out the pieces to the tribes of Israel, bringing about a war with the tribe of Benjamin that resulted in the death of thousands of Israelites. In the period sacral kingship, the story of David includes his murder of Uriah, the husband of the woman with whom he committed adultery, in II Samuel 11-12. Further, Absalom would murder his half-brothers in II Samuel 13.
Martin Luther notes that this command does not include either God or government, in that God has given to government the responsibility for punishing those who do evil.[33] The killing this commandment forbids is that of one individual to another. In reference to government, it has every right to be angry with those who do evil, even as Jesus forbids us to be angry with another. Since there is so much unhappiness in the world, however, God has placed this commandment between the good and the evil. One may allow envy to arise in the heart for the good things that others possess. The commandment means that we are to do no harm to our neighbor. Further, this commandment forbids the one who can do something to give aid and help to another from doing nothing, consistent with Matthew 25:42-43. We are to do good to our enemies.
John Calvin says that since the Lord binds humanity together in unity, God has entrusted the safety of everyone to each other.[34] God forbids all violence and injustice, and therefore all harm to the neighbor. God calls us to defend the life of the neighbor, to promote the tranquility of the neighbor, to be vigilant in warding off harm. Since God can see the heart, it also forbids to us any murderous intent or desire, as Jesus says in Matthew 5:22 and as I John 3:15 says. We must not violate the image of God, and thus, the other person is sacred. We are to watch over the preservation of our neighbor since we share the same flesh. If we wish adversity upon the neighbor, we are guilty of murder.
We find Jesus offering that it is not enough not to murder. The same is true, as we have seen in the Old Testament, in which even forbidding hate was important. One must deal with the heart, the source of murderous acts. Matthew 5:21-26 contains sayings of Jesus concerning killing. In the format of “holy law,” Jesus says that they have heard from ancient times that they shall not murder (the sixth commandment) and that whoever murders is liable for judgment. However, Jesus says to them several things that will deepen such statements. First (verse 22), if they are angry (the normal beginning of abuse) with anyone (brother), they will be liable for judgment. If they insult anyone (the brother), they will be liable to the council. If they say, “You fool,” they will be liable for the hell of fire. The emphasis is on the community and the harm done to it. Other Jewish writings contain similar thoughts. The gifts of the lawless are not acceptable (Sirach 34:21). One who insults or treats with contempt the face of person insults the face of a king and treats the face of the Lord with repugnance and contempt; one who expresses anger without provocation will receive anger on the day of great judgment; one who spits on the face of person will receive the same in the great judgment of the Lord (II Enoch 44:2-3). The opposition that Jesus sets up here creates a sense of newness from the prevailing sentences of law. In offering such a criticism of the Law, setting his word in opposition to it, he devalues the Law in favor of the loving disposition one is to have toward others. Second (verses 23-24), if they make an offering at the altar in the temple and remember that anyone has something against them, they are to leave their gift at the altar and reconcile, and then make their offering. The point moves away from words and toward the positive act of reconciliation, which involves actual love toward the member of the community. The one who shows mercy has the right to offer sacrifices. Third (verses 25-26 from material common between Matthew and Luke), they are to come terms quickly with their accuser while on the way to court, or the accuser may hand them over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and they will throw them into prison. Jesus assumes the cold and merciless quality of human courts. Do not rely upon them. Settle out of court. Jesus concludes by truly telling them, they will not get out until they have paid the last penny. Jesus understood that the dehumanizing act of murder has its roots in the dehumanizing of another person through our anger. Moreover, not only does anger dehumanize the other, it dehumanizes us, too. Every time we decide to allow anger to smolder inside of us, we become less than fully human, less than the people God created us to be. Instead of merely avoiding murder, we should embrace reconciliation, which leads to community.
Humanity has not yet eradicated infanticide. In certain corners of the globe, unwanted babies are still sacrificed on altars of desperation, gender preference, misguided notions of family honor, or mere convenience. In the United States, babies are still beaten and burned, shaken and strangled. However, we at least concur that when such things happen, evil has been done.
One exception to this consensus is the question of the unborn. A fetus is a person because there is a mother to love it like a baby, to delight in its growth, and to grieve its lose. And should there be no single person to cherish such a life, its value, actual or potential, would continue to reside in the heart of God. The question of the sanctity of a young life seems endlessly complex. The myriad ways to honor life, from its first stirrings to its finished shape, in its quality and its quantity, its proper freedoms and obligations, might converge at one point. God is both creative and redemptive. Passions continue to divide, but God continues both to bring life into being and graciously to receive it home again.
History carries as many justifications for war as wars themselves. Francis Bacon thought war necessary for a nation to preserve its physical vitality. Hegel referred to the slaughter-bench of human history. Christian thinkers have tended to raise the bar of justification. Augustine insisted that war be waged to avenge wrong and win peace. Aquinas validated it only in the resistance of evil. Calvin saw in war the strategy of God deliver punishment for injustice. A distinction has often been made between wars of principle and wars of conquest. The trouble is, every party to a war claims to be on the side of God. Which sort of war you are waging seems to be open to interpretation. Rousseau viewed pacifism as the intelligent response. Quakers have found war irreconcilable with the core teachings of Jesus. Fine, but the Nazi death camps were liberated by soldiers whose job was to kill murderers, not by pacifists or "peace activists."
Seventh
The seventh commandment (Exodus 20: 14 and Deuteronomy 5:18) is 14 You shall not commit adultery. The commandment occurs in the context of a conception of marriage that was not monogamous. A man was free to have sexual intercourse with the female slaves of his household. Stated negatively, it establishes a limit on sexual behavior. It invites us not to cross a certain line. Stated positively, it suggests living faithfully with your spouse. It suggests that we do all we can to protect marriage. It suggests the excellence of marriage. It suggests that we do everything we can to help others live faithfully as well. For the church to require celibacy from its clergy questionable for this reason.[35]
Several passages in the Old Testament relate to this commandment. A man is not to have sexual relations with the wife of a neighbor (Leviticus 18:20). The man and woman engaged in adultery are to be put to death (Leviticus 20:10). Killing both purges the evil from Israel (Deuteronomy 22:22). A man must either catch his wife in the act or have witnesses, but if not, and he has a spirit of jealousy, he may bring her to a priest with an offering that involves a ritual of holy water and writing curses upon paper and seeing if she has female discharge, the point being that if she has been faithful she will be able to have children (Numbers 5:11-30). Jeremiah pronounces that the Lord is witness to their adultery (29:23). The adulterous wife receives strangers instead of her husband (Ezekiel 16:32). In a graphic illustration of the spiritual condition of the northern kingdom, the Lord commands Hosea to love a woman who is an adulteress (3:1). He accuses their daughters-in-law of committing adultery (4:13). One who commits adultery has no sense and is on the path of self-destruction (Proverbs 6:32).
In the final edition of the Torah and theological history of Israel, we find startling examples of adultery.
Genesis 20:1-18 is the story of Abraham and Sarah in Gerrar. The source is the E document. Abraham says that Sarah is his sister. King Abimelech took Sarah. However, God came to the king in a dream and told him he would die, for he has taken a married woman. The king objects, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent people?” God responds, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart; furthermore, it was I who kept you from sinning against me. …. Return the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live.” Abraham is to be a blessing to the nations. Yet, he almost brought death. When the king tells his servants of his dream, they are afraid. The king then talks with Abraham, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom?” The defense by Abraham is that he thought there was no fear of God in this place and that they would kill him because they desired Sarah. He has told a partial truth, however, in that she is her half-sister. The king gives him sheep, oxen, and slaves, as well as his wife, and invites him to settle in his land. The prayer of Abraham healed Abimelech, wife, and his slaves so that they could have children. However, we see Abraham humiliated in that a non-Israelite surpasses him in his respect for God. The excuse of Abraham is weak when compared to the loyalty of the king. We see Elohim speaking to someone outside the family of Abraham. The prayer by Abraham is part of the work of a prophet.
The story of Joseph and the attempt by the queen of the Pharaoh to have sexual intercourse with him in Genesis 39 shows the horror with which J considered adultery.
The horror of adultery comes out strongly as well in the story of David and Bathsheba. I will discuss this in more detail under the tenth commandment concerning coveting. In this case, a highly valued king breaks several commandments. It centers on King David and his adultery with Bathsheba in II Samuel 11-12. He coveted the wife of his neighbor, breaking the 10th commandment. This led to his adultery, which then led to the murder of his neighbor. The point I would make here is that under sacral kingship, the king was to lead the way in obeying the covenant. Instead, even King David broke the commandments.
John Calvin says that God loves chastity and purity, and thus, we need to guard ourselves against uncleanness. Lust naturally tends toward adultery. God did not desire us to live a life of solitude. Rather, God gave us a partner in life. Any mode of cohabitation separate from marriage is something God curses. God has given the gift of celibacy to a few people, but to most, marriage is the primary to regulate lustful desire. The Lord affirms the few who are celibate in Matthew 19:12, but most will receive the gift of marriage. Marriage does not give the couple to “intemperate and unrestrained indulgence.” They are to have sobriety toward each other. He quotes Ambrose favorably in saying that one can commit adultery with his wife. Further, we need to consider that God has also forbidden fornication. Our minds must not burn with lust. We must not fill our eyes with corrupting objects. We must not deck our bodies with that which allure others. We must not fill our tongues with filthy speeches.[36]
In Canterbury Tales, the priest says that the commandment concerning adultery comes between the commandments on murder and theft because adultery is the greatest theft and the greatest murder, the theft of the body of the spouse and the murder of the one flesh union of spouses.
Jesus will refer to this commandment explicitly. While the sexual act of adultery may apply to many people, it will be a limited number. Jesus broadens the command to apply to many more.[37] Matthew 5:27-30 are sayings regarding adultery. The new righteousness Jesus is explaining now touches upon the most personal of relationships, that of marriage. John 8:1-11 contains the response of Jesus to one caught in the act of adultery. Interestingly, he rejects the notion that the woman caught in adultery should receive the biblical penalty of stoning. My point here is that we can legitimately understand this as an abrogation of the death penalty for the other Ten Commandments as well. John 4 and the story of the woman at the well offer another story of Jesus with one who was clearly not sexually pure. Luke 7:36-50 tells the story of a woman with a bad reputation disturbing a dinner, at which Jesus offers her forgiveness. In this case, as a sentence of holy law (verses 27-28 from Matthew), Jesus again says that they have heard it said they should not commit adultery (the sixth commandment). However, Jesus says that anyone who looks at a woman to lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Such a statement is consistent with what Jews at the time taught concerning lust, as we see in the tenth commandment not to covet the wife of the neighbor. Even the ancient world in general would have agreed. Lust dehumanizes people into objects that we use for our own pleasure. We might be able to avoid the physical act of adultery and thus obey the law, but we forget that the emotional or psychological attachment of lust is just as destructive. Jesus here calls us not to merely avoid breaking the law but to avoid breaking the fidelity of marriage that supports community, trust and love. In an expansion (verses 29-30 from Mark 9:47), Jesus says that if the right (symbolic of good, precious, and important) eye causes sin, tear it out and throw it away. It would be better to lose a member of the body that for God to throw the whole body into hell. If the right hand causes sin, cut it off and throw it away. It would be better to lose a member than for God to throw the whole body into hell.
Jesus’ extended application of the commandment against adultery brings up several serious issues. Notice the overlap between the seventh and eighth commandments and the tenth commandment. As Jesus observed, desire and acting on desire go hand in hand. This raises interpretive issues beyond that of the original separate commandments; but then again, so do most significant biblical texts when we try to interpret and apply them. The question is how far to go with this. The Ten Commandments inspire us to go well beyond their original statements, in that we use them as guiding principles (preferably principled) to use in deciding about wider behaviors in response to our covenant-making-and-keeping God, all in the light of Jesus Christ.
I offer a reflection on the notion of practicing high fidelity or matters of the heart. Every vice has its price.
The first task of interpreting this commandment is to free ourselves from its patriarchal baggage. The second is to embrace the wisdom that remains to guide us in right human relationships, to let the law awaken us to the possibility of binding covenantal love. If we ignore this wisdom, we risk wandering through life as lonely relational vagabonds. The chief purpo0se of sexuality, like all else in Hebrew faith, is to glorify God. To take the purpose of sexuality lightly is to forfeit its blessing. It is to play roulette with the future and watch it spin out of control.
Although the gospel narratives have several references to a saying of Jesus regarding divorce, I will focus on the one contained in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:31-32, where Jesus refers to the rule that to divorce a wife, a man must give her a certificate of divorce. In opposition to this rule, Jesus says that whoever divorces for any cause other than adultery causes her to commit adultery, and one who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Christians of every age have struggled to hear Jesus out and honor his wishes. Even today there remain those remarried divorcees willing to accept second-class church status as fair punishment for their sin, and pious eyes that still strain to look down or away whenever beauty draws near. Divorce, while still a wrenching experience, no longer carries the social stigma it once did. Few begrudge divorcees a second chance. A better understanding of abuse and mental cruelty has bolstered the prevailing view of divorce as an indispensable option, often even a salvation. While the dissolution of a marriage is still deemed a tragedy, especially where children are involved, subsequent remarriage is not labeled adultery. Jesus’ equation of a lustful heart with adultery is equally in jeopardy. Lust and beauty are woven into one seamless garment. Voyeurism is a trip to the mall or the grocery checkout line. Where does this leave Jesus’ teachings on adultery? Some view them as irrelevant to modern life; a few still wish to swallow them completely. Is there a middle ground, some means of appropriating their deeper wisdom without applying them prescriptively to the inscrutable world of human sexuality? The cost of severed covenant is always dear, exacting a price not only practical, but also spiritual. In our culture of casual sex, serial marriage, and multiple partnering, such a truth still speaks.
The covenant of marriage is more than a bond between two souls. It is a way of faithfulness that extends to all relationships, all realms of mutuality. While early, in love’s infancy, couples may stand face to face, in time, if love matures, they will turn cheek to cheek and face the world as one. Marriage finds its reason for being in a mission beyond itself.
Observance or even near-observance of this commandment alone would end the formation of the underclass. No amount of state aid can do what marriage and commitment to a spouse do to end poverty and almost all social pathologies.
Eighth
The eighth commandment (Exodus 20: 15 and Deuteronomy 5:19) is 15 You shall not steal. Stated negatively, it provides a limit to our behavior. It invites not to take the property of another. Stated positively, it suggests that we are to protect the property of another, just as we are to protect the life and spouse of another. It certainly suggests contentment with what one has while earning properly what one has. Stealing has the meaning of acquiring wrongfully the property of the other. One can steal in many ways. One might not give due attention to one’s work for an employer or not provide the good or service one said one would do.[38]
Some scholars think this prohibition referred to stealing a free person. One reason for this position is that stealing seems to be on the same level as murder and adultery, both of which are capital crimes. The only way stealing could reach this level of severity of punishment would be if it referred to the stealing of a person. However, the argument from punishment is weak since punishment is not something with which the Ten Commandments deal. However, the absolute and categorical nature of the commandments includes all objects of thefts, people as well as goods.
Other passages of the Old Testament have a close connection to this commandment. Kidnapping for the purpose of enslaving a fellow Israelite receives the death penalty (Exodus 21:16), for in this way you remove evil from Israel (Deuteronomy 24:7). Stealing of livestock requires restitution; if one is killed in the process of stealing the person who killed shall receive no punishment; the thief shall give restitution with proper consideration of the circumstances involved (Exodus 22:1-13).
The Torah and the theological history of Israel present a compelling case that Israel broke this commandment at deep levels.
First, the theological history of Israel shows that the first military defeat of Israel was due to stealing. As the story of Achan shows (Joshua 7: 1, 10-26), the entire community may suffer for the sin of one of its members. I will discuss more with the tenth commandment on coveting.
I Kings 21 includes the story of Ahab coveting the property of his neighbor, bringing false witnesses against him, and having him killed. Ahab will break commandments related to coveting, stealing, and murder in this one incident. The similarity of his sins with that of David is striking, in both directions.
John Calvin says the point of this commandment is that we must render to all persons their due. It forbids longing after the property of other people. It also urges us to preserve honestly our own property. Individual possessions are the result of the will of the Lord, so that no one can pervert his or her means to bad purposes without committed a fraud on a divine gift. He then considers differing types of theft, suggesting that people have artfully developed ways of depriving other people their due. Other types of theft include divulging secrets, depriving an employer the labor one owes, and an employer who torments employees. Every person has a calling to fulfill toward God. We obey this commandment if we are content with our lot and acquire things only by honest gain. We obey this commandment if we do not long to grow rich by injustice, nor plunder the goods of the neighbor to increase our own goods. In fact, we need to do what we can to help others preserve their property. We also need to help those going through difficulties. Citizens are to give their duty to their rulers and submit to their authority, as rulers have the duty to preserve public peace, protect good citizens, curb bad citizens, and conduct themselves in a manner in which God is judge of us all. People need to consider what they owe to their neighbors and pay what they owe, or they have committed theft.[39]
James may well offer a Christian commentary upon this commandment, as he urges the wealthy to consider how they have given the minimum in wages and frauded people, while they as rich people live in luxury; the wealthy are on the way to their own slaughter (James 5:1-6).
I offer a brief reflection on robbing reputation.
The problem of sin is that it is profitable. – Walter Rauschenbusch
Who steals my purse, steals trash;
‘tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
--Othello, 3.3.157-161
The fallacy behind every act of robbery is the assumption of scarcity, the mind-set that there can never be enough stuff to go around. For us to have, we must take from others. Also false is the idea that to keep, we are not free to share. Both ways, generosity loses out. Only a faith in the plenitude of existence can teach us not to steal. Only a belief in the abundance of creation can convince us not to withhold what others need.
Adherence to this commandment would have made the evil form of slavery that took place in America impossible. Riots have the character of disrespect for the property of others. Smashing the property of others inevitably leads to the smashing of heads of persons.
Ninth
The ninth commandment (Exodus 20: 16 and Deuteronomy 5:20) is 16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Such truth telling in court can be a matter of life or death. Psalms often has complaints about false witness. It relates to 3rd and 8th. Ancient Israel attached immense value to the testimony of the witness. Note the disastrous effect of false testimony in the story concerning the vineyard of Naboth in I Kings 21. Legal proceedings in Israel placed the burden proof upon the accused. One had to prove innocence in the face of the accusation. In that sense, the entire world is a courtroom. Thus, stated negatively, it establishes a limit. Stated positively, it suggests the value of protecting the name or the honor of the neighbor. God is truth, so speaking truthfully connects us to God. Thus, even if the neighbor sins and we see it, we have no right to report it to others. We have no right to slander the reputation of others.
We find the concern of this commandment in other parts of the Old Testament. They are not to spread a false report or conspire in offering a malicious witness (Exodus 23:1). The false witness shall receive the same punishment as he intended to inflict upon the one he witnessed against (Deuteronomy 19:16-19). They are not to be a slanderer among the people (Leviticus 19:16). They are not lie (Hosea 4:2). They are not to swear falsely (Jeremiah 7:9).
In the Torah and the theological history of Israel, we see that a king disobeyed this commandment. Again, Ahab is the key in I Kings 21.
Martin Luther says that the progression of the commandments from protection of body, spouse, and property continues now to the protection of our name or honor. God wants the honor of the neighbor protected. The plain meaning is to do so in court. Everyone is to help the neighbor secure his or her rights. One must honestly bear witness to the Word of God. Further, God prohibits any manner of injuring the neighbor with the tongue. He points out that we may see the neighbor sin, but we have no right to judge the neighbor and report it to others. One slanders the reputation of others if one knows sin and then communicates it to others. In his colorful way, Luther refers to persons who “know a slight offense of another, carry it into every corner, and are delighted and tickled that they can stir up another's displeasure [baseness], as swine roll themselves in the dirt and root in it with the snout.” In fact, we have the responsibility of contradicting a dishonorable report in order to protect the honor of another person, “for honor and a good name are easily taken away, but not easily restored.” Rather than spreading idle talk, follow what Jesus said in Matthew 18:15 and go to the person first. If you do, you have done a “precious and excellent” thing.[40]
John Calvin says the point of this commandment is that God, who is truth, hates falsehood. Therefore, we must cultivate truth toward each other. We must do nothing in the area of false accusations that injure the honor or fortune of the neighbor. We must not love speaking evil of others. We need to assist everyone in asserting the truth and maintaining his or her good name. It does not matter if we lie in court or lie in common conversation when it comes to obeying this commandment. However, the third commandment is a prohibition against perjury, so this commandment focuses upon common conversation. Yet, so many people sin in this respect. In fact, few people do not have this disease. We take delight in exposing the faults of others. We have the obligation to protect the honor of another, so far as truth will permit. We have a duty to protect the good name of the neighbor. Clearly, if the objective is correcting the neighbor, then we can engage in conversation. However, such is not the purpose of judicial accusation or public censure. The commandment also forbids eagerness to listen to gossip and slander.[41]
Jesus offered a distinct perspective on this theme of false witness. Matthew 5:33-37 are sayings around oaths. The source is Matthew but with a relationship with James 5:12 as well. In the form of holy law, Jesus says that they have heard from ancient times that they shall not swear falsely (9th commandment). Rather, they are to carry out the vows they have made to the Lord. However, in drawing a contrast with his teaching, he says they are not to swear at all. Do not swear by heaven, for it is throne of God. Do not swear by the earth, for it is the footstool for God. Do not swear by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for they cannot make one hair white or black. The point is that they are to let their word be yes or no. They are to be honest and truthful in all they do. Anything more than this comes from the evil one. Even in the Hellenistic world, the oath was undignified and contrary to ethical principles. The person should be reliable, rather than need an oath toward some external authority. Jesus demands unrestricted truthfulness of the human word. The reliability of the human being alone is decisive. Interestingly, according to Josephus, the Essenes rejected oaths so much so that Herod released them from the fealty oath of subjects. In rabbinic Judaism, the point was to prevent the misuse of the divine name by false or superfluous oaths. Matthew 23:16-22 may testify to the limited sense in which this prohibition found interpretation in early Christianity. Paul also made use of the oath.
I offer a reflection on telling the truth and on cost of lying and truth telling. “We do not talk to say something, but to gain a certain effect.” – Joseph Goebbels
The abode of lies is the privacy of the heart. Their goal is to remain hidden. Although many falsehoods eventually get exposed, others go to the grace with their perpetrators. God alone knows for sure. The original setting of this commandment is the courtroom, where the stakes for truth telling are high and the penalties for crime are stiff.
In the biblical narrative, the first creature human beings encounter is a serpent, who introduces itself with a lie. “It will be okay to eat the forbidden fruit,” it tells us. So she and Adam do. When later God seeks out the couple in the garden, they hide themselves, where we find deception number two. By the time God finds the underlying cause of it, Adam and Eve are prevaricating like there is no tomorrow. Human beings have been lying ever since. Yet, something in us does not like to lie. You may be an excellent liar, convincing in every way, but your own body will sell you down the river. The science of lie detection has long supposed this. Polygraphs bank on basic physiology. When we lie, we generate an automatic electrical and hormonal response. Deep in the recesses of the brain, we betray ourselves. The purpose of this internal lie detector is difficult to identify. Social interaction depends upon some degree of truth-telling, so we need to detect the lie within before we can detect it in others.
Sam Harris believes that we should never lie. In a short book called Lying, this neuroscientist makes the case that we can "radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie." This is true even with white lies, which we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort. These are the lies that most often tempt us, because they seduce us into thinking that we are being good people when we tell them. He will make the case that most forms of private and public evil are rooted in lying. Adultery, financial fraud, government corruption -- all are connected to a willingness to lie. Lying is the intentional misleading of others when they expect honest communication. It always takes a toll on relationships, even when the deceptions are minor. Harris reports on research that suggests "that all forms of lying -- including white lies meant to spare the feelings of others -- are associated with less satisfying relationships." So, if you want a good relationship with your spouse, your children, your colleagues, your neighbors and your friends, then do one simple thing: Tell them the truth. Do not hide information that would help them to make changes and improve their lives. Don't encourage them to keep walking in directions that are going to hurt or disappoint them. "One of the greatest problems for the liar is that he must keep track of his lies," says Harris. "This can require an extraordinary amount of work -- all of which comes at the expense of communication." In short, the truth is easy. Lies are a lot of work. If you want to relax and feel comfortable with the people around you, tell the truth.[42]
Lying is the root of nearly all major evils. All totalitarian states are based on lies. Had the Nazis not lied about Jews, there would not have been a Holocaust. Only people who believed that all Jews, including babies, were vermin, could, for example, lock hundreds of Jews into a synagogue and burn them alive. That similar lies are told about Jews today by Arab governments and by the Iranian state should awaken people to the Nazi-like threat that anti-Semitism still poses. One can same about the ideological flavor of political discourse in the West. Classes of people, whether white people, white men, or the rich, have been at the receiving end of lies.
Tenth
The tenth commandment (Exodus 20: 17 and Deuteronomy 5:21) is 17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Stated negatively, it invites us to check our desire to have that which we have no legitimate to have. Thus, to obey this commandment removes the reason for breaking the previous commandments. The commandment suggests an emotional element that often leads to commensurate action. It deals with our hearts. It suggests seizing objects for oneself. It suggests a wish for the appropriation of the property of another person for personal use. It suggests lust and inner desire for wealth.[43] Stated positively, it suggests permeating the heart with love for the neighbor. If we did, we would have no desire for the neighbor to lose anything. We would desire what is best for the neighbor. Love does not seek its own enrichment, but rather, the enrichment of the other.
The final edition of the Torah and the theological history of Israel offers some prime examples of coveting.
Genesis 3 is the J story of the entry of sin and death into the world that disrupts the intimacy humanity had with God and with each other. Sin does not attain by one event its dominion over people. It does so in a sequence that reaches a first climax with the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. We ought not look upon Genesis 3 in isolation and derive from it the idea of single fall. We are to look at the entire process whereby sin increases in the race and God takes countermeasures against its aggression to preserve the race from the ruinous consequences of its own acts. This approach is more in keeping with the biblical text in these stories of the early days of human history. Thus, the serpent is simply there, a creature that God has made, but is also crafty. The serpent tempts the woman and denies what God said in terms of dying. We see a wonderful description of the process of sin, having its origin in the breaking of the Ten Commandments, especially the tenth commandment that one shall not covet. She “saw” and had “delight.” She then “desired” wisdom that would come in disobedience to God, so she took the fruit and gave it to her husband. The desire oriented to what God forbids means that humanity thinks it has a better knowledge that will promote life.[44] We have a graphic example of temptation in Genesis 3. Eve isolates herself from Adam. While alone, the thought arises to do something God forbade, namely, eating fruit from one tree. It bothers us that the command of God concerns such an important think as fruit. Yet, often we reveal our character in small events. An angry word, a selfish act, lustful meditations, inappropriate consumption of food and expenditure of wealth, and so on, can reveal who we are and what we value. In the small act of disobedience, Eve discovered who she was. She wanted to lead her life independent of God. She also wanted to bring Adam into her orbit. Then, they broke the familiar relationship they had with God in Eden by hiding from God. The secretive nature of sinful behavior becomes clear. Yet, even though Adam and Eve sinned together, the sin disrupts their relationship with each other. The experience of authenticity they had in Eden with God, with each other, and with nature, remains a hope, but is not human life.
As the story of Achan shows (Joshua 7: 1, 10-26), the entire community may suffer for the sin of one of its members. The story shows the breaking of several of the Ten Commandments, mostly the tenth commandment of coveting and the eighth commandment for stealing. The story is one of ritual purification by removing the guilty party. When one removes the person, one removes the guilt. The story begins by saying that the Israelites broke faith concerning the devoted things. They did so in the person of Achan, from the tribe of Judah. He took some devoted things. The anger of the Lord, the only time mentioned in Joshua, burned against the Israelites. The Lord tells Joshua to stand up. The Lord wonders why Joshua has fallen on his face. The Lord says that Israel has sinned. They have transgressed any the covenant the Lord imposed on them. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen. They have acted deceitfully. They have put them among their belongings. For that reason, the Israelites are unable to stand before their enemies. They turn their backs to their enemies because they have become a thing devoted for destruction themselves. The Lord will be with Joshua no more, unless Joshua destroys the devoted things among them. Such a statement is strong, considering earlier promises to be with Joshua. He is to proceed to sanctify the people. If they do not, they will be unable to stand before their enemies. The point here is that the entire community may suffer for the sin of one of its members. The punishment of Achan is a ritual purification, by removing the guilty party Joshua removes the guilt. Achan confess that it the accusation is true. He is the one who has sinned against the Lord. What he did was that he saw the spoil, a beautiful mantle from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, and then he coveted them and took them. We can see here that the coveting led to the action of stealing.
Further, in the period sacral kingship, we find coveting at two significant levels. In King David, we find the coveting of the wife of the neighbor. II Samuel 11:1-12:15a is the story of the adultery of David with Bathsheba. Of course, here is an important example of the breaking of the Ten Commandments. David, the servant of the Lord, the anointed of the Lord, breaks the 10th, 7th, and 6th commandments in succession. The way the narrator tells the story, one could interpret that David forced himself on her. One ought not to let David off the hook in any way. He also becomes complicit in the killing of her husband, Uriah, thereby breaking yet another commandment. In terms of the insight of the story regarding coveting and adultery, he saw her beauty, which led to the action of inquiry and the action of sexual relations. The result is that she is pregnant. He tries to cover it up by having her husband have sex with her, but he is a military man and refuses to enjoy sex while his fellow soldiers are in battle. David then develops a plan that will result in the death of Uriah. David then marries Bathsheba. Yet, “the thing that David had done displease the Lord, and the Lord set Nathan to David.” David was angry at the parable Nathan tells of a rich man who stole the dearest lamb of a poor man – until Nathan pointed to David as the culprit. To his credit, David confesses his sin. One could argue that in the background of this story is the luxury to which David is now accustomed. While his soldiers are fighting, David is living a slothful life that leads to these terrible actions that break a covenant with God and the people of God.
In King Ahab we find the coveting of the property of the neighbor. I Kings 21:1-20, 23-24 has the story of Ahab of Israel and the vineyard of a subject, Naboth of Jezreel. The story relates the transgression by King Ahab of the Shechemite Twelve Commandments[45] and the Ten Commandments. The story shows the breaking of the eighth commandment on stealing, the ninth commandment on false witness, the tenth commandment on coveting, and the sixth commandment on murder. Such breaking of the covenant by the king will justify judgment on the kings. While Ahab wants the vineyard as a vegetable garden, Naboth responds that “The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” Ahab is resentful and would not eat. His wife, Jezebel, noticed his depression. When she learns why, she chides him that he governs Israel, implying that he can take what he wants. She promises that she will give the vineyard to him. She writes letters to the nobles of the area who would bring false testimony against him at a public feast. The accusation was that he “cursed God and the king.” They stoned him to death. The king goes to take possession of the vineyard. However, “the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite.” He is to meet with the king. He is to identify the sin of the king and pronounce judgment, “In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.” The response of Ahab to Elijah was, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” Elijah responds that the king has sold himself “to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord. He had a further judgment of Jezebel, that “the dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel.” The story shows the resistance the prophetic community gave to the movement toward syncretism between the worship of Yahweh and the worship of Baal. In this case, Jezebel was a worshipper of Baal in the traditions of Canaan. The point here is that the king remains under the covenant that Yahweh had with Israel. It was the practice of the city-states in Canaan that the king had arbitrary rights and privileges. The covenant with Yahweh required respect for the person, rights, and property of the people.
John Calvin says that the Lord wants the soul pervaded with love, and thus, we must banish from our minds anything of a perverse nature. We must not put into our minds anything that tends toward the neighbor losing anything. We need to desire what is best for our neighbor. Coveting can be as simple as having the mind tickled to desire what the neighbor has. This commandment deals with the source of the previous commandments concerning killing, stealing, false witness, and adultery. The character of God is righteous, and thus, the goal of the commandments is a righteous people. We are to love God with the whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. "The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned," (1 Tim. 1:5). Jesus said the weightier matters of the Law are justice, mercy, and faith. Love fulfills the Law, love to God fulfilling the first table of the commandments and love to neighbor fulfilling the second table. The observance of the commandments consists in the love of God and our neighbor. One leads the best and holiest life who refuses to live only for oneself. I Corinthians 13, especially in the statement that love does not seek its own, shows how we are to direct love away from self. We naturally show love to self, but we need to re-direct our love to others. As the parable of the Good Samaritan shows, the term “neighbor” concerns the stranger. This type of love embraces humanity, regardless of other distinctions we make. The fundamental principle is simple. Regardless of who the person is, God calls us to love the person, even as God desires us to love God. Calvin also takes the occasion to argue against the notion of venial and mortal sin, since all sin is mortal, because it consists in rebellion against the will of God. Since are venial because people obtain mercy through the mercy of God.[46]
I offer a reflection on the world of desire and desiring God.
He takes what he covets, and he covets what he sees. – From Silence of the Lamb
My son, better is to die than to be poor; for now Money is the world’s god. – Henry Peacham
I pay MasterCard with Visa. – Car bumper sticker
You made us for yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you. – Augustine
Eden is a place not only of great bounty but also of immense beauty. God goes to pains to make its fruits pleasant to the eye as well as satisfying to the stomach. This divine virtuosity in creation is a blessing in what might otherwise have been a very bleak cosmos. It is often argued that the loveliness of creation is what makes life worth living. God fills the world with things of beauty. Where there is beauty, there is majesty, or charm, and where neither of those, then at least interest. To covet is to want what is pleasant. Desire for what is pleasing is not itself bad; it is as natural as breathing. The world is a veritable smorgasbord of pleasantness. At issue in this commandment is whether and how we nurture and act upon our desires. Do not covet means do not crave that which is inappropriate to one’s relations with God and neighbor. Unchecked desire is the seedbed from which other violations of the law arise. Evil deeds plunder the world; covetousness plunders the heart.
The tree of knowledge sits in the middle of the garden. It is like all the others, pleasant to look upon and good for food. It is different as well. God has set it off limits, has forbidden the garden guests to draw near. They shall eat of its fruit only at the forfeit of their lives. The question we have about this story is always Why? Why put it there in plain view, where it can haunt us and taunt us and drive us insane? In the world God made, there are things we can see that we must not seize. To keep at arm’s length from the tree is really to embrace our own limits, to accept the parameters proper to being human. It is also to lave some room for blessing, to believe that, with due patience, goodness will come as a grace, without grasping. Meanwhile, there sits the tree. Adam and Even cannot take their eyes off it. Indeed, coveting is all about eyes. Long before the fruit touches their lips, they have already devoured it visually. Desire soon runs through every blood vessel to every corpuscle in ever far-flung recess of their beings. Adam and Eve have not yet eaten, but already the fruit has swallowed them whole, all because of a pair of staring eyes. This is how coveting works. It is a cruel affair, and we all know it. The tree lives in the middle of our lives as well, and we have tasted its fruit many times. In this way, we are all the offspring of Adam and Eve.
None of us is immune to this tendency of our time. We are bombarded with images of the rich and famous, of the over privileged few, and this has a corrosive effect on our hearts. We are so titillated by the desire to share their rare good fortune, or at least to live it vicariously, that we lose the capacity for empathy. This squabbling of the haves over the earth’s spoils is salt poured in the gaping wound of the true have-nots. I have resorted to shaming my children back from the brink of envy by contrasting their life situation with that of starving children all over the world. Such abstract comparisons rarely work. Covetousness is conquered not through guilt but through gratitude, less out of compunction than compassion. By experiencing life as trustworthy and good, children learn generosity. There is no substitute for the human encounter with grace.
America is awash in consumer household debt, as of 2000 it stood at $6.5 trillion. Many factors fuel such a trend. Some point a finger at inflation and the common sense that rising prices of products made saving to pay for things in cash lacking in sense. Ben Franklin’s admonition, “A penny saved is a penny earned,” joined the junk heap of history along with the layaway plan. After that, it took only a dash of deregulation and a touch of high tech innovation to birth the brave new world of revolving credit. Suddenly it was possible to have your heart’s desire, however large or small, years before you had to pay for it. The great democratization of credit promised more prosperous living for everyone. The young could join the ranks of the middle class before ever graduating from college. The newly unemployed could maintain accustomed levels of consumption right through an economic downturn. Even the poor could live rich by leveraging an endless future. The democratization of credit has been exposed as a myth. While the convenience of credit comes free for those who can pay off credit card debt in full each month, others have a dissimilar experience.
With this commandment’s prohibition of coveting, the commands come full circle. They have progressed from God to neighbor and back again. Coveting itself arises from desire turned askance from God. The Psalmist understood that we thirst for God, for to deny it is to deny a requirement for life and to shrivel. To turn in faith to God means to live without fear in the presence of people, things, and earthly desire. It is to know as the deer does, the source of living water. We continue to clutch at meaning and fulfillment in a close-fisted, cynical culture. Into this predicament is made an astonishing claim, old as Israel. No matter how far afield we wander, God is there to greet us and fill our deepest longing. More than we desire God, God desires us. The steadfast love of the Lord, ground of the universe, refuses to abandon us, but prods us gently, relentlessly back to itself.
The cultivation of class warfare -- i.e., the cultivation of coveting what richer citizens legitimately own -- inevitably leads to violating the other commandments, most particularly the ones that prohibit stealing and murdering.
[1] Martin Luther, The Large Catechism
[2]
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[4]
[5]
[6]
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[9] Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, 2-29.
[10] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, section 16.
[11] (Koehler-Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament — HALOT, article 7652).
[12]
[13] Notice verse 14’s significant “therefore.” Based on Yahweh’s gracious acts for Israel, Israel is to respond accordingly. Observe the verbs: “Revere,” “serve” and the dual “put away the gods … and serve the Lord” (parallels the dual biblical understanding of repentance — to turn from sin and to turn [back] to God and God’s ways). “To serve” and “servant” appear in 12 verses of Joshua 24. The meaning encompasses both obedience and worship. Joshua sets the example (hint to preachers): Verse 15: “as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” It may seem strange to our own cultural customs, but Joshua spoke/acted for his entire household. It’s not that others in his household had no mind or tongue of their own, but frequently in the cultures of the OT (and NT — see the baptisms of entire households in the book of Acts, upon the coming-to-faith of the head of the household) an entire household is considered a single entity, so the head of the household speaks/acts for the family/clan unit. Verses 17-18 give some evidence of a liturgical unity. The people declared that they would indeed serve the Lord who had delivered not only their ancestors but who had brought them to this place at this time. Verse 18b: “Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.” See Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (the shema).
[14]
[15] Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, 32.
[16] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, sections 18-21.
[17]
[18]
[19] Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, 49-56.
[20] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, sections 22-27.
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[22] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, 78-102.
[23] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, sections 28-34.
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[30] —Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys (Beacon Press, 1998), 69.
[31] Inspired by the reflections of
[32] Barth will discuss the commandment in his reflections on theological ethics. In Volume III.4 [55] he discusses, in the context of his ethics connected to his doctrine of creation.
[33] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, 179-198.
[34] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, sections 39-40.
[35] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, 199-221.
[36] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, section 41-44.
[37]
[38] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, 222-253.
[39] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, section 45-46.
[40] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, 254-290.
[41] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, 47-48.
[42] Harris, Sam. Lying. Four Elephants Press, 2013. 4, 8, 16, 29-30, 33-34, 40.
[43] Martin Luther, The Larger Catechism, 292.
[44] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 171, 230.
[45] 17 “Cursed be anyone who moves a neighbor’s boundary marker.” All the people shall say, “Amen!”
24 “Cursed be anyone who strikes down a neighbor in secret.” All the people shall say, “Amen!” – Deuteronomy 27
[46] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book Two, Chapter 8, section 49-59.
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