The Decalogue
1 God spoke all these words.
2 He said, “I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 Do not have other gods before me.
4 Do not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth;
5 you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God; for the sin of the fathers, when they rebel against me, I punish the sons, the grandsons and the great-grandsons;
6 but I show steadfast love until the thousandth generation for those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 Do not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who takes his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.
9 For six days you will labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a sabbath for Yahweh your God. Do not work that day, neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter nor your servants, men or women, nor your animals, nor the stranger who is staying with you.
11 For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day he rested; that is why Yahweh has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
12 Honor your father and your mother that you may have a long life in the land that Yahweh has given you.
13 Do not kill.
14 Do not commit adultery.
15 Do not steal.
16 Do not give false witness against your neighbor.
17 Do not covet your neigh bor’s house. Do not covet your neigh bor’s wife, or his servant, man or woman, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is his.”
18 In the meantime, all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning and heard the blast of the trumpet and saw the mountain smoking. They trembled with fear and kept at a distance.
19 Then they said to Moses, “You yourself speak to us and we shall listen. But do not have God speak to us, lest we die.”
20 Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid, for God has come to test you, so that the fear of God may be with you, and that you may not sin again.”
21 So the people kept at a distance while Moses went forward to the cloud where God was.
The Code of the Covenant
22 Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from the heavens.
23 Do not make any gods of silver or gold to stand beside me.
24 For me you are to make an altar of earth, and on it you will sacrifice burnt offerings and peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where you come to remember my name, I will come to you and bless you.
25 If you build an al tar of stone, do not make it of cut stones, for you will defile it by using tools on it.
26 And you will not ascend my altar on steps lest you expose your nakedness on it.
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Comments Exodus, Chapter 20
• 20.1 Moses went to the summit of Mount Sinai to receive the laws from God… and the text presents to us two bodies of law. The first, the shorter, contains the ten commandments. The second or the longer one was written after the time of Moses and comes from the time when the Israelites were established in Canaan; it is called the Code of the Covenant. (Chapters 20:22–23:33).
I am Yahweh your God. Important as the Ten Commandments or Decalogue are, what is still more important is the manner of presenting them. These two precepts: do not kill, do not steal, are taught in any civilized society. But here, Yahweh, the living and only God, speaks with the authority of one who has liberated Israel from its slavery and now wants to put it at his own service. And because he wants to make them free citizens of a free coun try, he imposes fundamental laws without which they will revert to slavery.
To begin with, God must be recognized as One, Holy, and Jealous: verses 3-11.
Do not have other gods before me. Yah weh is a jealous God, different from the gods of other people who allow rival divinities to set up shops side by side with them and answer petitions which they themselves cannot oblige. As people say, “If God does not listen to me in this church, I will go to ask in another.” Then we have one god for war, another for rain, another for mothers with child. All these are gods for people who see in religion the means of obtaining healings and benefits. In this we see a kind of faith which hopes to obtain the maximum from God. Yahweh, however, is not “at the service of Israel,” and not at our service; rather, it is we who are to serve God.
I punish the sons, the grandsons. The opposition between “children and grandchildren” and “a thousand generations” is a colorful way of saying that God, of course, does not leave sin unpunished, that he corrects the sinner, but even so, his mercy is measureless. This phrase clarifies the meaning of jealous God, which is frequently used in the Bible. It means that God does not close his eyes, that he will al ways restore justice, that he will not accept those who belong to him, betray their vocation.
See commentary on Dt 6:15.
Do not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven, or on the earth. Here are prohibited any images of creatures which might become gods and compete with the only One—and which require a worship (expressed in deeds and lifestyle) which was prohibited by God’s Law. In that time the Ca nanean gods were honored with sacred pros titution; idolatry and immorality went to gether. The prohibition of images is linked to the former: do not have other gods before me.
Notwithstanding the prohibition against images, the Bible arranges that the Ark of God will rest among images: two cherubim or angels that covered it with their wings (1 K 6:23-28). How do you explain this contradiction? The answer is very simple: The cherubim were not considered gods and did not demand a separate worship; they were spirit servants of God. In the same manner, the Church today approves statues of Mary and of the saints, who are not gods but servants of the One God. We do not ask them for something that God does not want to give. Only He is Good (Lk 18:19) and from him proceeds all good (James 1:17). To give an example, we serve Mary only by living in imitation of Christ. We do not expect from her anything but what the Father himself decides to give us through her mediation.
But it is also prohibited to make images of Yahweh. That is because God surpasses everything we can imagine or think about him. In that sense, the Bible prohibits us also from forming God to our own way of thinking. We are inclined to imagine God according to our own concepts, and so the faith of many vanishes when God does not direct events in the way they thought he should.
Why, then, do we paint pictures of Jesus? Simply because centuries after these first teachings of God to Moses, God came to us in the person of his son. Paul himself does not hesitate to use the word “image” in the Letter to the Colossians, Christ is the image of God whom we cannot see (Col 1:15). In him, the apostles saw God-made-man (1 Jn 1:1). The ferocious ban on any image was a necessary stage in the formation of Israel’s faith. But Moses knew nothing concerning the coming of Christ: he was therefore unable to say anything about the mystery of Son and Father, even still less on the images of Jesus.
IDOLS & IDOLATRY: see commentary on 2 K 17; Is 30:22; Ezk 23:5.
The Hebrews called Sabbath, that is, Rest, the last day of the week. They sanctified it mainly by the suspension of all activities.
On the seventh day Yahweh rested. In Dt 5:15 a somewhat different reason is given. See also Gen 2:2-3 and the commentary.
We know that Jesus was raised on the day following the sabbath. That is why the apostles, conscious that his Resurrection initiated new times, established this Day of the Lord (on Sunday) as the Christian holy day, or rest, or sabbath. See Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2; Rev 1:10. The sabbatists who nowadays want to observe the Jewish day, forget that Jesus and the apostles had authority to interpret and to reform the laws of Moses. They came from God, of course, but not directly (see Acts 7:38; Gal 3:19; Heb 2:2). See also Mt 5:27-28 and 31-32; Gal 5:4; Col 2:16.
In modern times, the workers had to fight so that Sunday would be recognized as a holiday. Perhaps those who easily work even on Sundays do not see the importance of rest for human and Christian life. In spite of the fact that Jesus, in the gospel, reacted against the too ri gorous observance of the sabbath (Mt 12; Jn 5), the weekly rest corresponds to the will of God.
Do not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain. There are four ways of invoking the name of Yahweh in vain:
– Using it, as was done before, for magic for mulas, like wishing to take the power of God by force. There are still people who use the Bible and Christian prayers as means to work miracles.
– Swearing by his name and not fulfilling the oath (Sir 23:9 and Mt 5:33).
– Blaspheming, that is, insulting the name of Yahweh, which incurred condemnation to death (Lev 24:10).
– Pronouncing or invoking the name of God without an important reason.
Honor your father and your mother. See Sir 3:2.
Do not steal. So that there may be trust and unity within a community, it is necessary that everyone show the greatest respect for the rights of his neighbor, that he pay his debts and refrain from taking what he finds at hand. However, this commandment should not be invoked to justify any type of private ownership. The Bible teaches that the earth belongs to God and whoever occupies it is only its administrator. It is even less tenable that a nation lay hands on the land and natural resources of other peo ple. The Bible does not agree that some group take possession of the national wealth and leave the masses in poverty (see Lev 25:13).
The Ten Commandments are commented on in the New Testament: Mt 5:22; 5:33; 5:27; Mk 7:10; Lk 18:20; Rom 7:7; 13:9; James 2:11.
• 22. The decalogue (that is, the Ten Commandments) needs to be applied to concrete reality to direct people’s lives. When the Israelites were installed in Palestine and passed from the wandering life of shepherds to the settled life of farmers, they made a body of laws which we find in chapter 20:22 to 23:19. It is called “The Code of the Covenant.” Very possibly, it was solemnly adopted by the twelve tribes when they were reunited at the call of Joshua and renewed the Covenant with Yahweh (see Jos 8:30).
Let us not think that God dictated to his people everything that is in the Bible. One proof of that is seen in this particular body of laws. Part of them were taken from the people of Canaan and adopted by the Israelites, who found the laws just and good. Another part are laws proper to Israel, which had been written in accordance with Moses’ teaching. These latter are easy to recognize because they say “you” or begin with “He who.”
It may be noted that Israel had increased punishment for the one who kills a neighbor (Gen 4:15; 9:15): faith in God leads to respect and protection of human life. This may be seen as a judgment on the consumer society, (termed liberal) that hardly respects life where money is scarce. A case in point might be the question of abortion.
In presenting this code which was adapted to a primitive society, the Bible invites us to promote legislation suitable for our industrial society but inspired by the same spirit of human solidarity. It is not for the Church to resolve the complex problems of our times, but it can establish general principles of life that conforms to the will of God and adapt it to the present society.