The Ten Commandments: Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church

By D. Patrick Miller

In this volume, Patrick D. Miller studies the Ten Commandments as ancient document and as contemporary guide. With careful attention to each commandment in its original context, this book shows the reader the modern relevance of these basic principles, as well as how the ideas of each commandment influenced the New Testament. More than an intellectual exercise, The Ten Commandments applies the call of the commandments to modern-day issues.

Westminster John Knox Press is proud to introduce an exciting new phase in the renowned Interpretation commentary series. Instead of focusing on individual books of the Bible, these new volumes will focus on the Bible's most enduring passages and most vital themes, bringing to these topics the insight and faithful wisdom that are longtime hallmarks of the Interpretation series. This expanded Interpretation series will be an excellent resource for all those who teach, preach, and study the Bible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Aug 6, 2009
• ISBN: 9781611644289

D. Patrick Miller

Patrick D. Miller is Charles T. Haley Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. He is the author of numerous books, including The Religion of Ancient Israel. He is coeditor of the Interpretation commentary series and the Westminster Bible Companion series. In 1998, he served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature. He was also editor of Theology Today for twenty years.

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The Ten Commandments

INTERPRETATION

Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church

INTERPRETATION

RESOURCES FOR THE USE OF SCRIPTURE IN THE CHURCH

Patrick D. Miller, Series Editor

Ellen F. Davis, Associate Editor

Richard B. Hays, Associate Editor

James L. Mays, Consulting Editor

PATRICK D. MILLER

The Ten

Commandments

INTERPRETATION Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church

© 2009 Patrick D. Miller

First edition

Westminster John Knox Press

Louisville, Kentucky

09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18—10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396. Or contact us online at www.wjkbooks.com.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, and 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NJPS are from The TANAKH: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text. Copyright © 1985 by the Jewish Publication Society. Used by permission.

Parts of chapter 7 originally appeared in Patrick D. Miller, Property and Possession in Light of the Commandments, from William Schweiker and Charles Mathewes, eds., Having © 2004 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, all rights reserved.

An earlier version of the appendix was published in William P. Brown, ed., The Ten Commandments: The Reciprocity of Faithfulness. Library of Theological Ethics. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. Pp. 12-29. Used by permission of the publisher, all rights reserved.

Book design by Drew Stevens

Cover design by designpointinc.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, Patrick D.

 The Ten commandments / Patrick D. Miller.

    p. cm.—(Interpretation)

 Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

 ISBN 978-0-664-23055-5 (alk. paper)

1. Ten commandments—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

 BS1285.52.M55 2009

 222’.16077—dc22

2009001918

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Westminster John Knox Press advocates the responsible use of our natural resources. The text paper of this book is made from at least 30% postconsumer waste.

CONTENTS

Series Foreword

Preface

Abbreviations for Scripture Versions

INTRODUCTION

The Significance of the Commandments

How to Think about the Commandments

The Place of the Commandments in the Christian Life

CHAPTER 1. THE LORD ALONE

The Prologue

The First Commandment: No Other Gods

The Second Commandment: Make No Images

CHAPTER 2. HALLOWING THE NAME OF GOD

The Meaning of the Third Commandment

The Name of God

Using and Misusing the Name of God

Excursus: Pronouncing the Name of God

CHAPTER 3. KEEPING THE SABBATH

What Is Commanded

Why Keep the Sabbath? The Exodus Rationale

Why Keep the Sabbath? The Deuteronomic Rationale

The Moral Issues

Holy Times

The Further Trajectory of the Commandment

Jesus and the Sabbath

The Sabbath or Sunday?

A Sabbath Rest Still Remains

CHAPTER 4. RESPECT FOR PARENTS

The Fifth Commandment as Bridge between the First and Second Tables

The Addressee of the Commandment

Honoring Parents: How Does It Happen?

The Commandment with a Promise

Further Developments in the Story of the Fifth Commandment

CHAPTER 5. PROTECTING LIFE

The Commandment in Its Context

The Meaning of the Commandment

The Trajectory of the Commandment

Internalizing the Commandment

The Positive Force of the Commandment

A Look at the New Testament

CHAPTER 6. MARRIAGE, SEX, AND THE NEIGHBOR

The Addressee of the Commandment

The Basic Claim of the Commandment

The Rationale for the Commandment

The Trajectory of the Commandment through Scripture

Into the New Testament by Way of the Tenth Commandment

CHAPTER 7. PROPERTY AND POSSESSIONS

The Meaning of the Commandment

The Legal Trajectory of the Commandment

The First Commandment

The Story of the Commandment

Other Voices

CHAPTER 8. TELLING THE TRUTH

The Meaning of the Commandment

The Violence of Words

The Starting Point and Continuing Context of the Commandment

Lying and Stealing—Honor and Property

The Story of the Commandment

Other Voices

The Continuing Trajectory of the Commandment

Truth-Telling as a Theological Issue

CHAPTER 9. DESIRE AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS

The Unresolved Problem of Numbering the Commandments

The Meaning of the Tenth Commandment

Elaborating the Commandment in the Laws

The First and the Last Commandments

From the Old Testament to the New

Wrapping It Up

APPENDIX: THE ETHICS OF THE COMMANDMENTS

The Givenness of the Commands

The Context of the Divine Commands: The Covenant and the Prologue

Responsibility, Character, and the Narrative of the Commandments

Motivation and Rationality: The Reasonableness of the Commandments

Sin and Guilt

Bibliography

Scripture Index

Subject Index

SERIES FOREWORD

This series of volumes supplements Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. The commentary series offers an exposition of the books of the Bible written for those who teach, preach, and study the Bible in the community of faith. This new series is addressed to the same audience and serves a similar purpose, providing additional resources for the interpretation of Scripture, but now dealing with features, themes, and issues significant for the whole rather than with individual books.

The Bible is composed of separate books. Its composition naturally has led its interpreters to address particular books. But there are other ways to approach the interpretation of the Bible that respond to other characteristics and features of the Scriptures. These other entries to the task of interpretation provide contexts, overviews, and perspectives that complement the book-by-book approach and discern dimensions of the Scriptures that the commentary design may not adequately explore.

The Bible as used in the Christian community is not only a collection of books but also itself a book that has a unity and coherence important to its meaning. Some volumes in this new series will deal with this canonical wholeness and seek to provide a wider context for the interpretation of individual books as well as a comprehensive theological perspective that reading single books does not provide.

Other volumes in the series will examine particular texts, like the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount, texts that have played such an important role in the faith and life of the Christian community that they constitute orienting foci for the understanding and use of Scripture.

A further concern of the series will be to consider important and often difficult topics, addressed at many different places in the books of the canon, that are of recurrent interest and concern to the church in its dependence on Scripture for faith and life. So the series will include volumes dealing with such topics as eschatology, women, wealth, and violence.

The books of the Bible are constituted from a variety of kinds of literature such as narrative, laws, hymns and prayers, letters, parables, miracle stories, and the like. To recognize and discern the contribution and importance of all these different kinds of material enriches and enlightens the use of Scripture. Volumes in the series will provide help in the interpretation of Scripture’s literary forms and genres.

The liturgy and practices of the gathered church are anchored in Scripture, as with the sacraments observed and the creeds recited. So another entry to the task of discerning the meaning and significance of biblical texts explored in this series is the relation between the liturgy of the church and the Scriptures.

Finally, there is certain ancient literature, such as the Apocrypha and the noncanonical gospels, that constitutes an important context to the interpretation of Scripture itself. Consequently, this series will provide volumes that offer guidance in understanding such writings and explore their significance for the interpretation of the Protestant canon.

The volumes in this second series of Interpretation deal with these important entries into the interpretation of the Bible. Together with the commentaries, they compose a library of resources for those who interpret Scripture as members of the community of faith. Each of them can be used independently for its own significant addition to the resources for the study of Scripture. But all of them intersect the commentaries in various ways and provide an important context for their use. The authors of these volumes are biblical scholars and theologians who are committed to the service of interpreting the Scriptures in and for the church. The editors and authors hope that the addition of this series to the commentaries will provide a major contribution to the vitality and richness of biblical interpretation in the church.

The Editors

PREFACE

For a number of years I taught a seminary course on Old Testament ethics. My regular routine was to begin with some general attention to the place and character of the law, followed by two weeks or so on the Ten Commandments before going on to look at various ethical and moral issues as they arise and are addressed in the Old Testament, topics such as the administration of justice, land and property, war and violence, man and woman, and marriage and family. After teaching the course several times, I realized that I had gradually shifted its plan and character. What had been a couple of weeks on the Commandments had gradually come to consume about two-thirds of the course. Originally discrete subjects of discussion had slowly been drawn into the treatment of the Commandments. The Commandments began to take over the course, largely because they seemed again and again to lead into the moral issues or concerns that I had formerly treated as separate topics. That discovery provoked me to begin asking to what extent the Commandments do indeed serve as a comprehensive framework and ground for the ethics of the Old Testament or indeed of the Bible as a whole. The process had two results. One was a shift to teaching my subject as a course on the Ten Commandments together with my colleague in ethics, Nancy Duff. The other result is the book that follows here.

The above sequence of events should not mislead the reader. What is before you is not a treatment of Old Testament ethics. It is rather an exposition of the Commandments in depth, seeking to give not only a reading of each commandment in its context but also to lay out the trajectory of its movement and place in Scripture. In the process, the interplay and resonance of the Commandments with many other texts is uncovered, and the outcome is a thick description of the Commandments resulting in various theological and moral issues coming to the fore and receiving some illumination. The treatment takes seriously the long-standing high status of the Commandments and seeks to show how various aspects of the presentation of the Commandments attest to their centrality and importance.

I hope that this reading of the Commandments can be of use to persons in several ways:

1. One may approach the text to get at the Decalogue as a whole and work through each one of the commandments as they are presented here, or one may choose to focus on a single commandment and the moral or theological issues that unfold from it. It is hoped that along with surveying the Commandments comprehensively via this presentation, readers will also want to turn to it when treating particular commandments or topics on their own, such as marriage and divorce, lying, theft, idolatry, and the like. The chapters share a common approach to the Commandments, but each is a discrete treatment of the subject of the commandment even as there are frequent references to other commandments in the discussion.

2. For each commandment, there is an effort to get at the fundamental meaning of the commandment, what it is about in its basic form. In most cases, that is an explicit part of the chapter on the commandment, as in the interpretation of the commandments about the name, the Sabbath, and killing. In some instances, discussion of the basic or essential meaning is part of the broader treatment of the commandment, as in the discussion of honoring parents. If one chooses, one may therefore confine oneself to a close look at the meaning of the commandment, to gather a basic sense of what it is after, without then pursuing its development, illustration, and elaboration in the rest of Scripture, a part of what each chapter also tries to accomplish.

3. Where it is important for either the interpretation of the whole or of a particular commandment, some attention is given to the context of the commandment: where it is in the Decalogue and how it is related to other commandments.

4. One of the main features of this book is the effort to move beyond the places where the Commandments are set forth, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, to explore their resonances and reflections in the rest of Scripture: more particularly, how each commandment is picked up in other contexts, for example, how it is illustrated in the legal texts or spelled out in relation to particular cases; what stories of the Bible reflect the teaching of the commandment; where and how it becomes a part of the prophetic teaching, the Psalms, and other parts of Scripture. The Commandments are not simply a text that is given once and for all. They have ongoing implications, and they are reflected in many texts. So in teaching about the Commandments, one will have resources available that illustrate the force or particularity of each commandment and stories that vividly portray the impact of the Commandments. The legal texts especially, but also the stories in which the Commandments come to play, help uncover the appropriate complexity and fullness of the Commandments. For example, as one delves into some of the texts of Numbers and Deuteronomy, one begins to see ways the command You shall not kill (RSV) has to do with manslaughter, murder, execution, and war. The legal texts of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers spell out in some detail how it is that the property of a neighbor is to be guarded from theft and the positive and prohibitive dimensions of not stealing. Stories and prophetic texts uncover the negative outcomes of coveting what belongs to another. The story of Ruth may be read as a kind of commentary on how one honors father and mother. And on turning to the legal texts, one discovers that commandment has to do with the way persons are to respond to and treat authority figures in general, not only parents.

5. For each commandment, there is some discussion of the way it comes to play in the New Testament. Where there are explicit quotations of the Commandments, that is obvious, but I have sought to go beyond those to see how the subject matter of particular commandments is reflected in and dealt with in the New Testament as well as the Old.

6. In the introduction to this volume, I note the way in which use of the lectionary to determine preaching texts has tended to reduce the once-common practice of preaching series of sermons on topics such as the Ten Commandments. That does not mean, however, that the Commandments cannot come into our preaching in other ways. In the pages that follow, many texts of Scripture are taken up because they deal with one or more of the Commandments in some fashion. That means one may come at the subject matter of a commandment from texts other than just the Decalogue texts themselves. I hope that as preachers take up their lectionary texts, they may turn to the textual index of this volume to see if, where, and how the Commandments belong to the interpretation and proclamation of the lectionary text.

7. While the main goal of the book is to probe deeply into the meaning and complexity of the Commandments and the way they are developed, elaborated, and specified in the whole of Scripture, I have included an appendix that seeks to look more systematically at the ethics of the Commandments. For further attempts in that direction, the reader may consult the following essays by the author listed in the bibliography: The Good Neighborhood: Identity and Community through the Commandments, and ‘That It May Go Well with You’: The Commandments and the Common Good.

My work on the Commandments has benefited from many conversations with colleagues at Princeton Theological Seminary and the Center of Theological Inquiry as well as from those who have listened to lectures and been willing to engage me in thinking about this significant text and what it means for faith and life. I will mention three persons in particular whose assistance has been invaluable. Nancy Duff taught me as well as our students as we shared a course on the Commandments over several years. Ellen Davis of Duke Divinity School did substantive editing of the manuscript to improve its quality and its communication. Finally, my wife, Mary Ann, has not only supported me through the many years of working on this topic; she has also talked with me about the issues of the book and carefully edited the whole manuscript.

ABBREVIATIONS

FOR SCRIPTURE VERSIONS

Introduction

The Significance of the Commandments

There are few biblical texts that have played as large a role in church and public life as the Ten Commandments. From their setting in Scripture to the contemporary debate about their public display, the Commandments have seemed to embody God’s will for human life as fully as any particular body of teaching or Scripture. Martin Luther famously said: This much is certain: those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge, and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters (Large Catechism, in Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, 382). The Commandments—also known as the Decalogue (the Ten Words; see discussion of the Prologue, below)—probably rank with the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer as the best-known and most memorized texts from the Bible.

From early in the church’s history, the Commandments have had a place in the confessions of the church and its catechetical processes. The catechetical tradition seems to have begun with Augustine but continued and grew through the centuries. The Commandments have been taught in many if not most of the catechisms of the Catholic Church as well as in the Lutheran and Reformed catechisms and those of other denominations. Focus on the Commandments, however, has not been confined to strictly catechetical genres. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin, for examples, all recognized the significance of the Decalogue and took it up in various contexts such as the Summa theologiae (Thomas), Treatise on Good Works (Luther), and the Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin) as well as in commentaries and sermons.

The Commandments have had their play as well in larger contexts. From the church fathers onward, they have been associated with or seen as a kind of natural law. Among the Reformers, both Calvin and Luther perceived the Decalogue as having summarized and sharpened natural law for special purposes (Dowey, Law in Luther and Calvin, 149). Central to those purposes are both the accusation of the conscience—the theological use of the law—and the provision of a civil order by restraining transgressions—the civil use of the law. For both Luther and Calvin, the Decalogue especially shows the law moving beyond these functions and serving as a kind of universal, eternal law to provide instruction for the life of faith, though for Luther it was important that such instruction be understood as doctrine and not law (Miller, Commandments in Reformed Perspective).

The equation of the Commandments with some kind of natural law or moral law available to humankind, even if perceived as part of the divine law, has led to a focus on them beyond their function within the community of faith, whether Jewish or Christian. They thus have been seen as instructive in ways that have influenced the civil and political order. So Alfred the Great prefaced his code of Saxon law with the Ten Commandments, and Thomas Hobbes found in the Decalogue grounding for his understanding of sovereignty. It is widely recognized that the Commandments have had a significant impact on the development of the secular legal codes of the Western World (Carter, Culture of Disbelief, 208). The specific impact of the Decalogue on American constitutionalism is a subject of debate (Green, Fount of Everything Just and Right?), but it is clear that it has had and continues to have a formative and normative role in much discussion of judicial and political matters in the United States.

In contemporary American life, the Commandments have become a kind of cultural code, as evidenced by the wide interest in their public display in public settings. As such, they have become a symbol and an icon as much as a text for learning, interpretation, and moral and religious guidance. The Commandments have long been on display, but that has characteristically been on the The Significance of the Commandments walls and windows of churches, as was required, for example, by the Anglican Canons of 1604. The movement of the Commandments into the more public sphere and into judicial and political contexts comes at a time when there appears to be less focus and emphasis on them in church life, as reflected in the decline of catechetical instruction on the one hand and the dominance of preaching by the lectionary on the other. The large place the Commandments have in the tradition, however, joins with the broader public discussion to provide an opportunity for more careful attention to the Commandments and their meaning and significance for our life with God and with each other.

That attention should start with the recognition that, whatever the ebb and flow of interest in the Commandments, the heavy focus on them in the history of Christianity is not misplaced. The way they are communicated in Scripture tells us that these Commandments matter very much and are the basic guidelines for our life. Among the scriptural indicators of their weight and importance are the following:

Unlike any other body of instruction in the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments are given twice, once in the narrative of the events at Sinai (Exod. 20) and again when Moses recalls those events as the people prepare to go into the land (Deut. 5).

The Commandments are given by the Lord directly to the people (face to face, Deut. 5:4), and this is the only time such direct speech to the whole people takes place. The rest of the statutes and ordinances are given to Moses to be taught to the people, differentiating them from the Commandments.

They are the first piece of legal material and separated from the statutes and ordinances that follow in the rest of Exodus and Deuteronomy as well as in Leviticus and Numbers. Those statutes and ordinances function as interpretative specification of the Commandments (see below).

The Commandments are written by the finger of God on stone, to make clear their source and endurance (Exod. 31:18; Deut. 4:13; 5:22; 9:10).

They are placed in the ark of the covenant, the Lord’s dwelling place in the midst of the people (Deut. 10:5), while the other legislation/instruction is written on a scroll and put beside the ark not in it (Deut. 31:24–26).

All these features of the Commandments and their place in the biblical story suggest that here indeed is something of primary importance. Repetition, placement, highlighting, divine authorship—all serve to tell the community of faith that here is the foundational word for your life as God’s people. All you need to know is given to you in these Ten Words. They may be summed up succinctly (as in the Great Commandment) and elaborated in great detail (as in the legal codes; see below), but they are a sufficient guide for one’s life with God and neighbor.

How to Think about the Commandments

Since the Ten Commandments have such a central role in the teaching of Scripture and the church as well as in the public sphere, they merit serious attention. In the pages that follow, several assumptions guide the treatment of the Commandments presented therein:

1. There is a continuing tension between the universality and the particularity of the Commandments and their simplicity and complexity. There are clearly ways in which they require modes of conduct or prohibit certain actions that are universally required or prohibited. Some of the Commandments, especially the second table—the Commandments dealing with the neighbor—are present in various ancient Near Eastern legal codes and widely assumed as normative in all societies. The fact that this is largely true of the second table, however, is indicative of the particularity of the Commandments, manifest especially in the first table, dealing with the relationship between Israel and its God. The Commandments depend from the start on a particular story and communal memory of that story as the ground for obedience (Miller, Is There a Place for the Ten Commandments? 1). One of the oft-neglected but implicit assumptions of the Decalogue is that it is a whole and one cannot take part of it without the whole. Especially one cannot claim authority for the second table apart from the first.

The tension between the simplicity and complexity of the Commandments is just as important. The Commandments’ simplicity—ten short rules—is one of the primary characteristics that have nourished their learning and keeping. They are easily learned and remembered and kept in mind. Indeed, the rubric Ten Commandments has come to apply to almost any set of simple rules for subjects from business to golf. Nothing should diminish that aspect of the Commandments. At the same time, what is often missed is that these simple rules affect all sorts of circumstances in human life. An account of that complexity is necessary for proper attention to them in our lives. The presence of much longer and quite particular legal statutes following the Commandments and clearly having to do with matters handled briefly in the Commandments makes that clear. The catechisms that take up the Commandments regularly have the students learn not only the commandment but also what it means.

2. The Commandments, therefore, need to be interpreted. The story itself makes that clear as Moses is sent to get the rest of the teaching from the Lord (Exod. 20:18–20; Deut. 5:22–33). The issue is not the obscurity of the Commandments but their breadth and the need to fill out the particulars of what all this way of acting means. What follows the Commandments in Scripture is an extended process of interpreting the Commandments, often in an explicit way as they are related to other statutes and ordinances in the legal texts of the Torah or Pentateuch. Frequently there are obvious connections between the subject matter of particular statutes and a commandment, as for example, in the statutes of Exodus 22:1–15, which deal at some points specifically with stealing but throughout with issues of property and its endangerment (see chap. 7, below). The connections between the Decalogue in Deuteronomy and the statutes of the Deuteronomic Code in Deuteronomy 12–26 are especially close. As Stephen Kaufman has put it, the statutes and ordinances of the Code are brought together in a highly structured composition whose major topical units are arranged according to the laws of the Decalogue (Structure, 108–9). The very specific and varied legal cases and statutes of the Code are thus in sequence according to the Commandments of Deuteronomy 5. They are not the same as the statutes in the Book of the Covenant (Exod. 20:22–23:33) because they represent different times and circumstances, yet the Commandments, which are essentially the same in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, provide a perduring and essentially unchanging foundation of basic principles.

This understanding of the relation of the statutes and ordinances to the Ten Commandments has been recognized from earliest times. One can see it in the Jewish tradition in Philo of Alexandria, who claimed that the Decalogue encompasses the whole of the Torah, for all of the [laws] simply elaborate in detail what the Ten Commandments say in compressed form (Amir, Decalogue according to Philo, 126). In the Christian tradition, Aquinas argued that all the precepts of the Law are so many parts of those of the decalogue (Summa theologiae, vol. 29). Martin Luther began each chapter of his Deuteronomy commentary by identifying which commandment that chapter develops, and Calvin developed most of his Harmony of the Pentateuch largely around the Commandments.

3. The Commandments are thus the starting point of a rich trajectory of meaning and effects, principles and actions, that tell the community of faith how to live its life in relation to God and neighbor. To comprehend and act upon the instruction of the Commandments fully involves a look at the trajectory they create. It begins with the Commandments and continues through Scripture and the church’s teaching and history on down to the present. This is in marked contrast to what is often a misunderstanding of the simplicity of the Commandments, reflected, for example, in a comment in an issue of Newsweek: The Ten Commandments are generally cut and dried, but—let’s face it—other religious rules and customs can be hard to grasp (Sheahen, Beliefwatch Thou Shalt). A more accurate picture of the way the Commandments function is as follows:

Rather than being rigid, fixed, archaic, and obvious, the Commandments open up a moral and theological arc or movement that began long ago and is still going on. They are dynamic, open in meaning and effect, and uncovering many dimensions subtle and obvious of the moral life for the community that lives in covenant with the Lord of Israel who is known to us in Jesus Christ. … The result of perceiving, tracing, and appropriating such a trajectory or arc of moral understanding flowing out of the Commandments is, in effect, a thick description of the morality or ethics of the Commandments. (Miller, Metaphors for the Moral, 39)

One can compare the relation between the Commandments and the various statutes and ordinances that follow them in the books of the Torah or Pentateuch with the relation of the United States Constitution to the extensive cases or case laws that have developed out of the Constitution in seeking to work out its implications in particular situations. The Commandments serve as a kind of constitution for the covenanted community; they stand in relation to all further direction for life, more specific and contextual, in the Mosaic teaching, roughly as the Constitution stands in relation to the later legal and judicial issues and cases that have come up in the history of this nation. Here story is also important, for many persons know and hold to the Constitution as much because of their knowledge of the story of its creation and preservation as for their knowledge of the details of the Constitution itself.

In this book, the focus is on the way in which the whole of Scripture—New Testament as well as Old—opens up the meaning of the Commandments and informs us how to live and act—and think—in the light of them. Particular attention is given to the legal codes that are presented as a continuation of the teaching of the Commandments, yet prophets, sages, and psalmists come into view as well. Not least of all, one must listen to the stories of Scripture as they tell about the meaning of the Commandments in the life of the people of God. Specific cases and illustrative stories help us understand what the Commandments mean, how they work out in specific concrete situations, what actions are involved or excluded, what effects come from obedience or disobedience.

4. All the Commandments, either explicitly or implicitly, have both a positive and a negative meaning. They tell us what we are not to do and what we are to do. Though the Commandments are largely prohibitive in form, it is important that two of the Commandments—Sabbath observance and honoring parents—are in positive form. In the case of the Sabbath Commandment, we have it in both positive form—Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy—and negative—You shall not do any work. Calvin has argued that this assumption is one of the critical interpretive principles in understanding the Commandments. In his view a sober interpretation goes beyond the words, and the best rule is attention … is directed to the reason of the commandment (Institutes 2.8.8). This means an interpretive process is necessary for finding out the fullness of the Commandment.

Thus in each commandment we must investigate what it is concerned with; then we must seek out its purpose, until we find what the Lawgiver testifies there to be pleasing or displeasing to himself. Finally, from this same thing we must derive an argument on the other side, in this manner: if this pleases God, the opposite displeases him; if this displeases, the opposite pleases him; if he commands this, he forbids the opposite; if he forbids this, he enjoins the opposite. (Institutes 2.8.8).

Calvin then goes on to be more explicit and illustrative:

For by the virtue contrary to the vice, men [e.g., Aquinas] usually mean abstinence from that vice. We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds. Therefore in this commandment, You shall not kill, men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so. Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can. To prove that I am not speaking unjustly: God forbids us to hurt or harm a brother unjustly because he wills that the brother’s life be dear and precious to us. So at the same time he requires those duties of love which can apply to its preservation. And thus we see how the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do.

While Luther does not seem to articulate this point so much as an interpretive principle, he does operate in much the same manner in his comment on the Commandments. Thus the commandment against false witness means not only No one shall use the tongue to harm a neighbor. It also means: Rather we should use our tongue to speak only the best about all people, to cover the sins and infirmities of our neighbors, to justify their actions, and to cloak and veil them with our own honor (Large Catechism, in Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, 424). One may see Calvin’s point about uncovering both what each commandment enjoins and what it prohibits illustrated well in the Westminster Larger Catechism, where there are three questions about each commandment: What is the commandment? What are the duties required in the commandment? and What are the sins forbidden in the commandment?

5. There are different ways of numbering the Commandments, followed by different traditions. Each of these ways has some justification on the basis of the text of the Commandments, and each numeration presents a particular angle on the Commandments as a whole, what is emphasized, and how they are related to each other. The different numerations, their rationales and their implications, are discussed in the chapters that follow, especially in the first and last, and along the way some attention is given to the ordering and sequence of the Commandments, variations in the order, and what that may tell us. In this book, the numbering associated with the Reformed tradition is followed. The prohibition of other gods and the prohibition of making images are the First and Second Commandments, and the two sentences about coveting at the end are read as a single commandment, the Tenth Commandment. The fact that the chapter numbers of the book do not agree with this numbering—the First and Second Commandments and the Prologue are treated in a single chapter—is an implicit indication that other ways of associating the Commandments are acknowledged and given credence.

6. While in some sense each commandment takes up a particular topic, there is also much overlap and interplay between the commandments. The variations in numbering reflect that overlap, since they have to do in part with whether a particular sentence is a separate commandment or an aspect of another commandment. Whatever numbering is followed, one must still take account of the resonances and connections between or among the individual commandments.

The Place of the Commandments in the Christian Life

Reflection on the Commandments inevitably raises the question of the role they play in the life of individual Christians and the church. In some ways that is the subject of the whole book that follows, but a particular facet of that is the matter of what place the Ten Commandments as a whole have in our life. What do we do with them? Where do they belong? Several answers may be given to those questions.

The Commandments cannot play a role in the lives of Christians unless they are learned and taken to heart. That means then that the long-standing association of the Commandments with the teaching and catechetical traditions of the church needs to be maintained. They can play no role if they are not first memorized and learned, so that they are held in the mind and memory of individuals from an early age onward. Here is where the brevity and simplicity of the Commandments—at least most of them—is a clue to what we are to do with them. Take them to heart and learn them so that they are implanted in the mind and available for guidance. This may happen through learning one of the catechisms, but that is not the only avenue. Catechisms are less in vogue, so the church needs to find places for learning the Commandments in the educational events that it carries on, whether in church school classes or in confirmation classes. Also the family, which was the original context in which the Commandments were learned and appropriated, is still a locus for learning the Commandments. Memorization of biblical texts is a disappearing practice, but there are some texts, such as the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm, that are still assumed to be held in the minds of most Christians. If one attends to the central place of the Commandments in Scripture and the place they have had in the church’s teaching, then they also belong to the enterprise of memorizing and holding texts in one’s mind and heart.

Teaching the Commandments, however, involves more than simply memorizing them, which is the point of the chapters that follow. They need to be interpreted and discussed so that the community learns what they mean and what is expected of us if we are to live by these foundational principles. If the Commandments are as important as seems to be suggested by the tradition and the culture, they should have a place in the teaching and preaching of the church. Recovery of the Commandments as a subject of preaching is especially important because the gradual rise of the lectionary as a guide to the subject matter of contemporary preaching has meant a significant decrease of sermons on series of biblical texts, such as the Commandments or the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostles’ Creed. Such series have not disappeared, however, and they need to be reclaimed, especially for the Commandments, precisely because the congregation assumes their normative place but often does not know what all that means. The simplicity of the Commandments, which makes them available for learning and comprehending in their essence, needs to be supplemented by opening up their complexity and fullness, illustrating and developing ways they touch base with contemporary issues.

What place do the Commandments have in the liturgy? Historically, they have been a part of the service in Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed worship from the beginning, but that is rarely the case now. In Protestant and Catholic liturgy, the Commandments have largely disappeared. As Reinhard Hütter observes, It is a matter of fact that in mainline liturgies across the board ecumenically, the Ten Commandments have ceased to be a regular component of Christian worship on the Lord’s day (The Ten Commandments as a Mirror of Sin(s), 55). If, however, the Commandments belong with the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed as the central texts of the church’s tradition, something suggested by the attention they receive in the catechetical and confessional history of the church, then it is desirable that they be before the congregation in order that the people may learn and remember them, being reminded each Sunday of God’s way for God’s people. The Commandments also have a function in the movement of the liturgy, though that can vary depending upon their location in the sequence and order of the service. In the Lutheran context, the Commandments were usually read as preparation for the confession of sin, thus serving one of the functions of the law: to convict us of our sins so as to open our hearts to confession and God’s forgiveness. Similarly, up to the modern era the Anglican Book of Common Prayer has called for the repetition of the Commandments by the priest while the people would respond to each commandment with Lord, have mercy.

While the Reformed tradition did not worry too much at first about where the Commandments belonged in the liturgy, because they were understood to function primarily catechetically, Calvin and other Reformed leaders came to have the Commandments sung or read after the confession of sin and the words of absolution, as a guide to living according to God’s instruction. While consistent with the general view of the law in the respective traditions, these different placings of the Commandments were not and should not be regarded as fixed. Reformed worshipers have also read or said the Commandments before the confession of sin as a way of the people acknowledging their failure to live by God’s commands. Nor should one assume only one place for the Commandments. It certainly would be appropriate in the Reformed tradition, for example, to have a recitation of the Commandments following the preaching of the Word, reminding the congregation of how one is to live after hearing and receiving the gospel. The issue finally is not so much the necessity to fix a single place for reading or saying the Commandments as it is the matter of whether they shall have any place in the regular worship of the people of God.

Finally, what then about the physical location of the Commandments? That may not be a large question, but it is worth consideration both because the physical location of the Commandments has been a matter of serious concern from their initial promulgation in Scripture, when Moses was instructed to place the tablets with the Commandments in the ark of the covenant and because the physical placement of the Commandments has come to be a large political and judicial issue in American life. The decline of the use of the Commandments in catechesis and worship suggests that we may need to think afresh about how to post the Commandments so that they do not disappear from our common life. We may need to write them on the walls and build stone monuments with the Commandments inscribed on them so that they are regularly seen and read and not forgotten. The best place for doing that, however, is where Christians receive and learn them in the context of the life of faith, in the sacred spaces of church and synagogue, where parents and children learn together how to serve the Lord our God and how the Commandments can help us with critical issues of faith and morals. Perhaps we should go back to the early Anglican tradition in this country, following the Canons of 1604, according to which the Ten Commandments were to be set up on the East end of every Church and Chapel, where the people may best see and read the same. No pattern of church architecture can be exclusive any more, but there may be new ways of posting the Commandments visibly in the sanctuaries or classrooms of the church (Miller, Is There a Place for the Ten Commandments?").

CHAPTER 1

The Lord Alone

²I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me. ⁴You 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. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, ⁶but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:2–6//Deuteronomy 5:6–10

The beginning of the Commandments is in a strict sense their foundation. Everything depends upon and flows from this starting point. That beginning, however, is not simply the First Commandment. In fact, it is a whole that is comprised of three parts so integrally related they may be seen as involving only two parts, and different readers will view the two parts differently. In what follows, this section of the Decalogue will be treated as having three parts, while we recognize that they are profoundly connected and that other numerations are also justified by what the text presents. Those three parts are the Prologue (Exod. 20:2//Deut. 5:6); the First Commandment (Exod. 20:3//Deut. 5:7); and the Second Commandment (Exod. 20:4–6//Deut. 5:8–10). Before dealing separately with these different pieces, therefore, it is necessary to look at what holds them together and produces different ways of numbering the Commandments:

A. Person and speaker. In these verses the Lord speaks in the first person. The rest of the Decalogue will speak of the Lord in the third person. The change in voice beginning with the Name Commandment invites the hearer to see the preceding verses as some kind of unity.

B. The Masoretic Hebrew text. In both versions of the Hebrew text of the Decalogue, these verses are held together as a single paragraph.

C. Grammar and syntax. The sentence You shall not bow down to them or worship them in what is here called the Second Commandment (Exod. 20:4–6//Deut. 5:8–10) is connected to the First Commandment by its content and its object. The expression bow down to them or worship them is characteristic language for the worship of other gods, not specifically for bowing down before idols or images (e.g., Exod. 23:24; Deut. 28:14). The plural object them refers back to the other gods of the First Commandment because the word for idol in the Second Commandment is singular and not plural. In the present form of the text, therefore, the Second Commandment has been incorporated within the framework of the First Commandment (Childs, Exodus, 405).

D. Substance and logic. The First Commandment is the corollary of the Prologue. That is, because I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, … you shall have no other gods before me. This connection, this logic, is not confined to the Decalogue. In what some would see as one of the earliest references to the First Commandment, Hosea 13:4 says: Yet I have been the LORD your God ever since the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior (cf. Lev. 25:38; Josh. 24:16–19; Judg. 6:7–10; Jer. 11:6–13; Ps. 81:9–10). In other words the exclusive devotion to the Lord begins with the reality, the experience, of delivery from bondage. The two go together inextricably. The logic has been articulated by James Mays as follows:

By his salvation the LORD claimed and took Israel as his people and revealed himself as the LORD your God. … Henceforth all other gods should be strange and foreign to Israel. The first commandment is the true meaning of the exodus. (Psalms, 267)

To be set free is to be set on a journey to the mountain where the full implications of the act are set forth in the Commandments and joyfully accepted.

As the First Commandment is connected to the Prologue, so also is it connected substantively to the Second Commandment because the other gods and the idols are often one and the same thing (e.g., Exod. 32:4, 8; Deut. 4:28; 28:36, 64; 32:16–21). This means that although the long motivational clause of Exodus 20:5b–6 and Deuteronomy 5:9b–10—for I the LORD your God am a jealous God …—will be discussed below as part of the Second Commandment, it is both a continuation of the self-presentation of the deity in the Prologue and the motivating ground for the First Commandment as well as the Second.

The features of the text described above make it unsurprising that there are different numerations of the Ten Commandments. Orthodox Jewish numbering takes very seriously the role of the Prologue by interpreting it as the First Commandment. That would seem to be anomalous since the sentence is not in command form as is the case with the rest of the Commandments. One must remember, however, that when the Decalogue is specifically named with the number ten, it is always "the Ten Words (in Heb.: Exod. 34:28; Deut. 4:13; 10:4). So it is quite sensible to see in the Prologue the first" of those words. The intricate connection between prohibiting other gods and prohibiting idol making, together with the way that bowing down to them and serving them (RSV) can be connected to both other gods and idols, leads some, specifically Jewish as well as Catholic and Lutheran traditions, to see a single commandment in the double prohibition of having other gods and making an idol of anything. Still others, for example, the Reformed tradition, have numbered as is being done in this book: marking the first actual command, not to have other gods, as the First Commandment and the prohibition of image making as the Second Commandment. As close as they are in meaning and effect, there is still some particularity to each of them that merits receiving each one as a pointed word from the Lord.

The Prologue

The Prologue to the Commandments can be translated either as I, the LORD, am your God who brought you out … (e.g., NJPS) or "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out … (e.g., NRSV). The force of the two alternatives is not sharply different. Both serve to present and identify the one who now sets before the people the covenantal obligations. As the starting point of the Decalogue, this self-presentation by the deity does several things:

The Prologue gives the name, and thus the identity, of the one who places these obligations upon the people. It is YHWH, Adonai, the LORD. What follows cannot be separated from this identity. It may be that there are rules, or principles, here that can be found in other contexts, but those who consent to these obligations—by their own actions or through the assent of their forebears—do so in response to the one with this name, the God whose deeds and words are recounted in the Bible. Living this way, according to these guidelines, is always both a response to the one whose name is the Lord and a reflection of the character and way of the God who so commands.

The Prologue establishes a relationship as the context in which the Commandments are to be lived out. The identity of this deity is also relational: "I am the LORD your God. The directives that follow the Prologue are what characterize the relationship. Obligation arises out of the covenantal relationship: I will take you as my people, and I will be your God (Exod. 6:7). The phrase your God" is reiterated so much in the Commandments that it almost becomes a part of the name and is clearly a part of the identity. The close connection to the First Commandment is evident: I am the Lord your God, so you shall not have other gods.

In its final clause the Prologue makes clear that the relationship is neither nebulous nor insubstantial. It is rooted in the experience of delivery out of slavery. The ethic of the Commandments is not a general ethic. Worship by this community is not a general requirement. It is in response to the one who has saved the community from bondage (cf. Exod. 3:17; Isa. 58:6). Even the language brought you out of Egypt is juridical language for release of slaves or land (e.g., Lev. 25:41–42). A slave goes out or is set free according to the statutes or is brought out/led out by another party by a price of redemption or by force (Lohfink, Great Themes, 45). Again and again in the statutes and ordinances that spell out the specifics of living by the Commandments, one encounters a recollection or a call to remember how the Lord led them out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Lev. 25:42; Deut. 13:5; 15:15; 20:1; 24:18, 22; et al.). All this means that the way of the Commandments is the way to live in both freedom and subjection. That freedom is not a kind of implicit or natural freedom as human beings. Those who live this way are not a free people but a freed people. That freedom is not inherent: it is a gift and it shapes everything that follows. The ethic of the Commandments is as much an ethic of gratitude and response as it is an ethic of obligation and duty (cf. the appendix below).

In sum, by the self-presentation formula in the Prologue, both the Lord of Israel and the people of Israel are given primary identities. There is no more specific way of identifying this God, who is named the Lord, than as the one who has set free a people upon whom an oppressive slavery had been inflicted. And the people who live by this constitutional law identify themselves as a community of persons redeemed from bondage. Two things happen when slaves are set free, according to the paradigm of Exodus. They sing praises to the liberating God (Exod. 15), and they learn what it means to be free (Exod. 20). That is why Paul Lehmann says that the two tablets of Moses’ are a primer for learning to spell and to spell out freedom (The Decalogue, 95). If we ever find these commands too binding, it may be because we do not really know what it means to be slaves who have been liberated from terrible slavery into a new service. In the statutes for the jubilee year of release, Leviticus 25:42 puts it this way: For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold. There is a powerful irony, a paradox, a dialectic at work here that is central to the being and doing of this people and any people who follow in their train. It is probably best expressed in the claim, embodied in these commandments, that in the service of this God is perfect freedom (Collect for Peace, Morning Prayer 1, Book of Common Prayer). Or as 1 Peter puts it, As servants [slaves] of God, live as free people (2:16).

The foundational character of the Prologue is further evidenced in the way in which the story of God’s redemption of the Israelites from Egypt in Exodus 1–15 is told in terms of the two parts of the Prologue: the identification or self-presentation of the deity and the characterization of the Lord as the one who redeemed Israel from slavery. The two main foci of the Exodus narrative in Exodus 1–15 are exactly those two matters. In Exodus 3–4, the account of the call of Moses, the critical moment is the revelation of the name of the God (3:13–14): [When] they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? I AM WHO I AM, … the LORD, is the response. In Exodus 5–15, one hears the detailed and long story of the Lord’s bringing the people out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage. Already in the call account, however, it is clear that the words and deeds that follow shall give the identity to the God who speaks. Again and again one hears, that you may know that I am the LORD. And when the Exodus is completed, it culminates in a song of praise: I will sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously. … This is my God, and I will praise him. … The LORD is his name (Exod. 15:1–3). One can read Exodus 1–15 as entirely and solely an interpretive account of the meaning of the Prologue to the Commandments and the narrative ground for the First