American culture provides dramatic presentations of Moses delivering the Decalogue. Who can forget Charleton Heston in The Ten Commandments coming down the mountain after the fiery carving of the tablets by the voice of God? Or, the scene with Mel Brooks in History of the World, Part I, where he’s juggling three tablets, drops one and declares “God gives you these 15, I mean, 10 commandments.” Only Mel Brooks could put into a movie what we’ve always thought about! Of course we have had our share of legal struggles with regard to public displays of the Decalogue as well. That’s why, when I saw that they were the selection from the Hebrew Scripture today, I decided to take a look at them.
First, I took a sneak peek in the story before Moses went to the mountain in the first place. He’d just been exhorted by Jethro, his father-in-law, to delegate his authority to some of the others for judgment and decision making. Jethro was a good mentor and called out Moses on his potential burnout trajectory. Moses follows Jethro’s instruction and, of course, now that he has time on his hands, God calls him to do something else. This in itself is enough for another sermon – but, it’ll have to wait for another time.
So, Moses is summoned to Mount Sinai and God tells Moses to tell the people to get ready for a theophany. He ascends the mountain and has a dialogue with God. Moses asks questions and God answers. When Moses descends, he provides the people with a shorthand review of the conversation. These “ten statements” (as they are literally translated from the Hebrew) become the basis of how the Israelites are to live in relationship with God and in community. They are a great foundation, because it doesn’t take long before the Israelites are at odds with Moses, Aaron, and each other.
Given the fact that in our own time we’ve been having impassioned debates about the appropriateness of these 10 Statements, I think it behooves us to look at how our Hebrew ancestors would have understood them in their time. The Decalogue can be arranged in two different pairings. In Pairing #1, the first three delineate our duties to God and the last seven our duties toward our fellow human beings. Another pairing would be to take the first five as those with an attached explanation and the second five as ethical requirements.
The Israelites were in a culture where there were many gods. The God of Israel acknowledges this but requires that God’s people worship only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are not to make statues or other images in order to worship them. God needs to be the focus of worship and adoration. The God of Israel is an impassioned God – the covenant between God and God’s people is like marriage. To worship an idol is equal to committing adultery against God and God grieves over the betrayal. And while God will visit the guilt of such a transgression to the third and fourth generation, the kindness of God outweighs this guilt to the thousandth generation.
To make wrongful use of the name of the Lord referred to the self-curses made by people in court or in public affairs that would take effect if the invoker spoke falsely or failed to keep a promise. This sounds like “may the Lord do such and such to me if I . . .”. My gut tells me that God probably doesn’t want to hear God’s name used as profanity, but that was not the original intent of the statement. The first three directives are there to ensure the deepest respect for God and require us to make a decision to honor God.
And so, how do we honor God? That’s where the rest of the Decalogue comes into play. First and foremost, we keep Sabbath. This is not just a day wherein we stop working, but a day that is dedicated to a special purpose for God’s glory. This didn’t just extend to the master of the house, but to the slaves and spouses and children. Sabbath time recognizes that God rested at the time of creation and to honor God, we too must rest. We honor God by honoring our parents, by seeing them as human beings, and by helping them when they become infirm. We honor them in order to bridge our relationships with God and with others.
We honor each other by not taking the life of someone illicitly, by honoring the marriage vows of others as well as our own, by not stealing from others or creating false stories about them. We honor each other by not scheming to acquire something that doesn’t belong to us.
These 10 statements are only the outline. The next few chapters of Exodus go into detail about how we are to keep them. And, if that’s not enough, you can go to Deuteronomy and Leviticus to get even more instruction. It’s a contract that keeps lawyers busy even in modern times.
Okay. So that’s the scholarly interpretation. It doesn’t really do much for me on its own. So, what is there about the recitation of the Decalogue that seemed to call me into contemplation? I envisioned myself as one of the people waiting for Moses at the bottom of the mountain. I’ve just experienced liberation from the enemy. I watched the Pharoah’s soldiers swallowed by the water as they tried to follow us. We celebrated with songs and dancing. But, then it sank in that we were really on our own. The food we were able to take with us was disappearing, the water was nearly gone, and the Promised Land didn’t seem to be anywhere on the horizon. Now that we had no external enemy, we began the process of making enemies of each other. We started doubting our leaders, demanding that they give us the comforts we’d left behind. Without some standards for living with each other in this new land, it was obvious that chaos would over take us. Moses – we pleaded – do something!
When I think about those at the mountain’s edge, I realize that we are again struggling to understand how to live with each other in a new world. But in the 10th year of the fall of the Towers, it’s not that we have no enemy but that we see enemies on every side. People who have twisted the scriptures to match them to their own personal agendas declare that only they have the path to God and all others should be dismissed or dispatched. The news is full of stories of people who have dishonored their parents or others who have mentored or coached them, stolen from others, been caught in sexual improprieties, lied under oath to protect their interest, or taken another’s life – usually in conjunction with one of the aforementioned offenses. We constantly bow to gods other than the One who has created us in the Divine Image. We are a people in the wilderness longing for order, looking to our leaders to provide it, and forgetting that the means of achieving order lies not in the hands of a few, but in the wills of the many.
To make matters worse, when we are brought up short, we usually retreat to the minutia of Exodus or Deuteronomy or Leviticus to find a loophole to defend our cause. We forget the overarching command to be in relationship with our God and with each other. It is no wonder that Jesus declared that there were only two commandments – love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. And when he was questioned about who our neighbor was, he replied with the story of a loathed enemy who assisted the downtrodden when those who thought they had God wrapped up neatly in their front pocket did not stop to offer aid.
There are no policies, or laws, or rules, or regulations that can codify our obligation to our Creator and subsequently to all of the created order. Anyone who has ever written a contract or customary knows that sections are written to prevent someone doing something that someone else has done before. Before too much time goes by we are so bound by the law that we have forgotten why we have gathered in the first place.
Of course, some rules are necessary to keep us safe and to set standards, but they should not be used to separate people into artificial strata in order to fulfill the whims of a few or to keep others at arms length. What is necessary is that we place our egos and self-interest aside in favor of the Divine desire for all. That is what the 10 Commandments call us to do.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep these laws. Amen.
(c) 2011 C. B. Park - All rights reserved
