LET’S TALK ABOUT THE “TEN COMMANDMENTS”

Exodus 20 | Exodus 34 | Deuteronomy 5:1-22

WARNING: You will be executed for breaking the Sabbath

CONTEXT: ~ 1250 BCE The characterization of the Ten Commandments as the foundation of Western Civilization is sketchy and also scary. There are many versions of the Ten Commandments. They often don’t mean what they seem to mean to a modern audience.

The scriptural passages most people call “The Ten Commandments” are widely misunderstood in several different ways.

• The section most people call the Ten Commandments in Ex, 20 (the Decalogue) is not identified as such in the text.
• However, an entirely difference set of laws is explicitly identified in Ex. 34 as the Ten Commandments. These laws include a prohibition on cooking a kid lamb in its mother’s milk.
• There a several divergent versions of the Ten Commandments based on religious denomination and interpretation.

This would be mostly a matter of academic debate if not for the fact that this material is used as a political bludgeon by the Christian right. In addition to the matter of church and state separation (it doesn’t really need a constitutional scholar to ‘splain it), the fact is that the proponents of this obsolete law set don’t seem to understand much about it.

A great amount of analysis isn’t necessary to understand the essentials of the main stream Ten Commandments as given by YHWH in Exodus 20. This version is commonly known as the Decalogue¹. On its face, the language isn’t ambiguous or tricky. But there are a host of problems associated with material, not the least of which is the fact that there are multiple occurrences of these decrees both internally and across various religion denominations.

For starters, the content that has come to be called the iconic Ten Commandments is not the scripture that is identified as such in the actual text. Furthermore, the format varies among Jewish, Catholic and Protestant Bible editions, beginning with the numbering itself.² As noted, the text of the original Decalogue in Exodus 20 is not called the Ten Commandments. That may be because one can easily sort this passage into up to twelve rules if you don’t know where one ends and another begins.³ A lot of people, including Martin Luther, have gotten into the act over the years.

Interestingly, the passages designated by God himself as the Ten Commandments are found in a more obscure and somewhat bizarre section of law found later in Exodus (Ex. 34). As clearly explained, that section is hand chiseled on the second set of stone tablets to replace those smashed by Moses. According to God’s own text, these are the same words that were on the first set. But they aren’t.

This is what God said: 

“The Lord said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.” – Ex. 34:1  [NIV]

It’s similar in every translation.

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.” – Ex. 34:1  [KJV]

Here’s the thing: they are not the same words as appear on the first set. Furthermore, with two exceptions, they are not variations or paraphrases of the first set. They are completely different, significantly longer. There is a lot of material about festivals. There is the ban on seething a kid goat in its mother’s milk. These statutes are even less likely candidates for “foundations of Western Civilization” than the much vaunted Decalogue.

But God labels this law set as the ten commandments, which he did not in Ex. 20 (the mainstream version):

“And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” – Ex. 34:28 {KJV]

We have no way of knowing how large the tablets were, but based on the quantity of text in Ex, 34, there is a lot of chiseling to be done. Moses can’t be happy schlepping them up and down this rugged mountain (one of the best real world possibilities for Mt. Sinai is a mile and half high).

Underpinning of Western Civilization? Nope.

One encounters commentators who have taken the position that they see no problem with mandatory posting of the Ten Commandments in schools because they don’t refer to any specific religion and therefore don’t violate the separation clause.  That is utter nonsense. The most reasonable scenario is that anyone making that statement is either counting on an audience that has never read the text, or has not read it themselves. Could be both.

The first four commandments (depending on the scriptural flavor you choose) are either specifically about the ancient Hebrew battle god YHWH, or have nothing to do with ethical or moral behavior. To be repetitively clear: these rules are not universal models for “Western Civilization.” They apply only to the god of the Jews. They are even not “Western” at all, but rather, the ramblings of an Asiatic deity who grew up in the Arabian desert. Posting them in a public place is a clear violation of the Establishment Clause.

Let’s take a look at a few commandments.

 

1. The first commandment instructs us to love YHWH and no other gods.

“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shall have no other gods before me.”- Ex 20:2 [KJV]

That sentence pertains specifically to YHWH, god of the Old Testament. It doesn’t refer to the rebranded Christian god (God), nor to Allah, nor to elephant headed, multi-armed polytheistic pantheons that populate Hinduism, nor to practitioners of indigenous spirituality, nor to Buddhists nor to Taoists. If the Ten Commandments represent a universal code foundational to our American civilization, how to explain the reference to bringing “us” out of Egypt.

YHWH doesn’t translate to “god.” These are simply the letters of his name, as spelled out to Moses in the Burning Bush lecture. There is also plenty to talk about with regard to YHWH’s statement “you shall have no other gods before me.” Taken at face value, the Lord is conceding that there are other gods.⁴ He isn’t pleased with this fact, but he can live with it as long as he is number one. The term “before me” is clear.

If this is the model of the belief system of the early Israelites, then they were monolatristic and not monotheistic.⁵

We have just discussed the First Commandment as understood by Protestants, but it should be noted that various denominations number the commandments differently. Jewish Bibles consider the first sentence “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” to be the first commandment, although it isn’t a commandment or instruction at all. It’s a statement. The paragraph that starts the mainstream commandments yields one, two or three separate directives depending on the religious denomination. Addressing the political forces that demand public displays, we are compelled to ask: which version would you mandate in front of a Arkansas grade school? Probably not the Hebrew. 

If the Ten Commandments are read to a Muslim student in school, can we count on them to applaud the slaughter of Egyptian children in the night? Furthermore, this commandment has no positive meaning for the 28% of Americans who identify as “no religion.”

 

2. Prohibition on “graven images” or statues

The Protestant zealots of the Reformation were very disappointed with the Catholic Church, but were especially disappointed in the statues and iconography that helped focus the faith of the faithful. They reviled the papists as idolaters back in the day and still do in many parts of the world.

One of the least defensible aspects if the Protestant revolt was wide spread destruction of Catholic art and statues. These violent events were troubling even to Martin Luther, who ruefully used the term Bildersturm (picture storm) to describe them.

That may be traceable to the fact that the Catholic version of the Decalogue is different from the Protestant laws. In the Protestant Old Testament and Hebrew Bible, the prohibition on “graven images” is the second commandment. This is not true of the Catholic Bible (there are other major differences among denominations), where the graven image thing is rolled up into a composite first commandment.

The extended text of what is called the second commandment in Protestant bibles is as follows:

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”

There are really two key points here. 1) what is really meant by a graven image? 2) what is the distinction between making statues of YHWH and making statues of other gods?

A graven image is a carved statue or idol, the “graven” referring to the process used in creating it. During the reformation, the rebelling Protestant sects extended the definition of graven to include Catholic paintings and other art. For the upstart iconoclasts, the issue was that the Catholic hordes were worshiping the statue rather than god, whereas a Catholic would claim they were worshiping the statue as a localized symbol of god. This is a fairly subtle distinction, yet it arises from a starker dichotomy. The accusation thrown at Catholics by their enemies was that they were idolaters, a statement more about worshiping incorrect gods instead of the real god. So there is a distinction between using a statue as a cult accessory for a fake god, and a cult accessory for a real god.

And of course, the problem here is that the original scripture was directed at the enemies of the ancient Israelites as the Hebrew tribes erratically evolved from polytheism through monolatry to monotheism. So the interpretation of the passage thousands of years later is through the lens of completely different era.

Everything else aside, this theological dispute was responsible for the violent destruction of uncounted great artworks, probably numbering in the millions.

Surprisingly, the prohibition on statues is not found in Lutheran Bibles: Martin Luther simply removed it.  Similarly, the Catholic Bible rolled it into the First Commandment as an afterthought.  However one parses it, this interpretation of the graven image injunction was responsible for mass demolition and dismantling of statuary and art during the Protestant reformation.⁷ Ironically, the current evangelical initiative to install Ten Commandment monuments in public places is in violation of this commandment of the ban.

The real reason it was “in there”

In the ancient Near East, the physical worship of a particular god didn’t imply worshiping the statue, the assumption held by Protestant iconoclasts. Rather, the god icon functioned as a locus point. The ancient Canaanites, including the Hebrews, kept small household statues in their houses. These represented personal gods, not necessarily the official deities of the state. Abraham’s father Terah was in fact a manufacturer of small idols for personal use.

The reason the Jewish authorities sought to forbid worship of statues was to prevent the establishment of local shrines in the hinterlands, especially Samaria in the Northern Kingdom. This was a political position, meant to centralize and solidify control of the YHWH cult in Jerusalem. 

The graven image question is tricky and endlessly debated, but however you interpret the various versions, it has nothing to do with any ethical or moral behavior. Nor does it represent a foundational concept of Western culture.

3: Taking the Lord’s name in vain

A lot of people think this speech control warning applies to general swearing, but that’s not the case.⁶ The original admonition was to make sure the sacred name of YHWH could not be used to cast enchanted spells. In other words, it was a prohibition against competing priests/shamans usurping the supernatural perquisites of official Levite priests. It wasn’t about the F word or the S word. It was about magical competition, very much like stealing a spell at Hogwarts. Commandment Number 3 also prohibits using YHWH’s name as surety for lying (as in “Swear to God!”).

The original intent had nothing to do with improving Western Civilization. It is religion-specific.

4: Observing the Sabbath under penalty of death

This one is important for you sinners out there who sneak out to work on the Sabbath, because YHWH proclaimed the death penalty for those who work on the Lord’s Day. Inexplicably, the capital punishment addendum to the law isn’t announced until Ex. 35, fifteen chapters after the first announcement.

“Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.” – Ex. 35:2. [KJV]

Shut down that lawn mower and get inside before He notices, y’all.

As long as we are dealing with a situation that could be life threatening, let’s be sure to identify which Sabbath we are observing: Saturday for the Jews or Sunday for the Christians? Islam doesn’t have a Sabbath per se, but they do have a day of prayer that is similar: Friday. So, to return to the central argument of this section, if we are to go to the trouble of violating the Constitution by pretending the Ten Commandments are not about a specific religion, then which of the days shall we choose for our day of divinely enforced rest? Choose wisely: your life may depend on it.

Once again, this is all good fun (and also accurate) but it is specific to an upstart Bronze Age desert god name YHWH and has nothing to do with moral guidance. The only reason to observe the Sabbath is because a cranky invisible man said so.

 

6. Thou shalt not kill unless there is a good reason

Anyone familiar with the more violent episodes in the Old Testament might at first conclude that this commandment must only mean not to murder Israelites. Not only does God brag about putting hundreds of thousands of Egyptians to the sword in Exodus, he also commands the butchering of Canaanites, women, children, pets, etc. for the crime of living in Canaan (named after the people who live there) prior to the arrival of the Israelites. YHWH is clearly comfortable with the murder of enemy peoples.

But a quick tour of the scriptures indicates that the Lord doesn’t really have a problem with the smiting of Israelites either. No sooner does Moses get down the mountain with the tablets of the law (the first time) than he orders 3,000 Israelites be put to the sword for partying with the golden calf. This massacre of unarmed Israelites takes place with the Ten Commandments freshly inscribed on the tablets.

Achan’s entire family and dozens of his soldiers are wiped out because he kept a Canaanite robe (Joshua 6:18-19) as a souvenir. God smote Uzzah for attempting to prevent the Ark (2 Sam. 6:1-7) from falling off of an oxcart. He sends two she bears to slay forty-two teenagers for making fun of Elisha’s baldspot. And he kills off tens of thousands of Israelite sinners with an unending series of plagues.

So if God is fine with genocide of heathens and doesn’t hesitate to snuff out his own chosen for arbitrary minor crimes, what exactly does the Sixth (or Fifth) Commandment mean?

 

7. No Adultery

The context of this law makes for another awkward pillar of Western Civilization. In ancient Hebrew Law, adultery applied to the woman. If a married woman was caught having sex with another man, she is to be killed. Men are not prohibited from having sex with women who are not their wives, as long as the woman isn’t married to someone else. This prohibition is actually closely related to the 9^th (or 9^th and 10^th) Commandment, making adultery a property crime as much as anything. If a man has sex with a married woman, the act is regarded as stealing a man’s property.

Polygamy was the norm in the Ancient Near East, so the definition of adultery is even more tenuous in the context of when this was written.

 

Working on the sabbath carries the death penalty and other unpleasant surprises

 

NOTES:

1. Or: the Ten Words. The Decalogue found in the Book of Exodus 20 is the most popular version of the Ten Commandments, although it is far from the only one. There is another version in Exodus that is significantly different, as well as a recapitulation in Deuteronomy with variations.
2. There are significant differences in the content of Bibles issued by various denominations. We are not talking about variations in translation, but rather major discrepancies regarding the actual number of actual “books” contained in each. For example, the Catholic Bible (ironically) includes the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees while the Hebrew Bible does not. Maccabbees contains the story of the rededication of the Second Temple after the Greeks were defeated. However, the miracle of the lamps was made up later and is found only in the Talmud.
3. Wife coveting gets lumped in with other property rights in some versions.
4. There are multiple references in the Old Testament that suggest “El” (more or less the god of Genesis) is one of a pantheon of other holy players.
5. Monolarity: The ancient Hebrews are credited with “inventing” monotheism, even though they didn’t. Monotheism is the belief in one and only one god. Monolarity is the worship of a single deity, whoh ranks at the top of the competitive god totem pole.
6. H-E- double-hockey-sticks is a good hack that always fools the Lord. The Creator of the Universe is all like: “I know they’re up to something….but I can’t quite figure it out.”
7. In this instance, “Protestant” refers to the dozens of non-Catholic and non-Lutheran denominations. The Protestant Bible editions don’t contain the same version of the Exodus 20 Decalogue as the Catholic/Lutheran versions.