10/10/2011

 

The Ten Commandments

Lesson Four

 

A little review

          The Ten Commandments do not stand alone.  They are followed almost immediately by a private interview God conducts with Moses, as God fills Moses in on what it will mean to the people’s conduct to be living as “the people of the Covenant”.  And so, in the passages between Exodus 20:22 and Exodus 23:19 we have a series of laws which expound on and expand the meanings of the Commandments.  This section is referred to as the Book of the Covenant.

 

          This evening, we will look at the Commandments that begin with “Thou shalt not kill” or, in the more modern versions, “You shall not murder”.  This commandment and the ones that follow are referred to as The Second Tablet, and they are so constructed to set the standards for prohibiting things that do harm to your neighbors in society. (The first concerned our relationship to God: the fifth commandment served as a swing to hold together the two tablets.)

 

You shall not murder

 

The literal translation of the Hebrew verb is “violent and unauthorized killing”. Now, how obvious is that?  Of course, everybody is against murder!  Oh, that it was that simple.  First, we have to deal with the translation of the commandment:  is it “kill” as the older translations prefer (KJV), or is it “murder” as is in NRSV and those other versions that have appeared in recent years.  The difficulty is that the word “kill” is too general, too encompassing; the ord “murder” is too restrictive, too narrow.    If you think everybody agrees what is or is not killing, think about the people who will invoke this commandment with vigor against abortion and see no difficulty with capital punishment.

 

Under Jewish law, the taking of a life was not forbidden.  Punishment was even defined.  It could be by stoning, beheading, burning or strangling.  What crimes were so severe to call for such death?  Let’s see how the Bible defines capital crimes:

 

                   Murder, child sacrifice, manslaughter, bearing false witness in

                   testimony re: capital punishment, keeping an ox known to be

                   dangerous, kidnapping, insulting a parent, incest, adultery,

                   false claims of prophecy, blasphemy, intrusion of an alien into

                   a sacred place, and Sabbath breaking.

 

That seems like a lot of punishable crimes, and the list began very early in the Bible. We have examples of murder even in the “first family” where one of the sons of Adam and Eve kills another.  However, even in that case, when the death penalty might have been appropriate, it is not given.  Instead, God gives Cain protection by marking him so that he will not be killed by anybody else. Given these examples, we can say that the commandment appears to lend itself to confusion.  But,  this is not so.  We have the one statement that ought to make it clear:  you do not take the life of another human being because all human beings are made in the image of God.  Therefore, to strike one of God’s own is to strike God.  That ought to be clear enough, but there seem to be some exceptions.  While recognizing the severity of killing, and the need for punishment, we discover that there were few examples of execution.

 

The scales of justice were tipped toward protection of the accused in early OT times.  We need to understand how the mercy of the courts made the death penalty almost impossible to carry out.

 

For instance, it required the testimony of two eye witnesses for conviction.        

 

   Circumstantial evidence was not accepted.

 

And revenge killing was limited by “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a foot for a foot and a hand for a hand”.

 

Also, one who had been convicted had recourse to ask for a new trial, even as he was being led to his place of execution, if he could convince his judges of new evidence.  To make sure that no last minute evidence came too late, a man with a white handkerchief stood at the doorway to the court ready to signal a man on a horse if new evidence came to light, and that horseman rode with the wind to stop the execution at the last minute. There was no possibility of a rapid penalty.  Due process was the law, and it was slow.  All across the land, no more than thirty miles apart, were the “cities of refuge” to which an accused man might flee when pursued by an avenger of the person who had been killed.  If he made it to the “city of refuge” he would find protection while his case was being adjudicated.  Then, if the death was found to be  unplanned or accidental, he was free to leave the city without danger of retribution.  If, however, he was found to have “struck with intent to harm” he was forced from the city of refuge into the waiting arms of the avenger.

 

Now, the varying translations, “to kill” or “to murder”, bring confusion into the modern world’s difficulty with death.  People will ask questions about…

 

          Abortion:  even here it is not as simple as many would like to make    

          it. Is it indeed a question of a woman’s right to make decisions

          concerning her own body?  What if a fetus is determined to be so

          damaged as to be unable to live in humane conditions?  What if a birth

          will bring untenable hardships of poverty to potential siblings?  What

          about pregnancy as the result of rape or incest?

 

          Euthanasia:  Is there a right to die?  Is quality of life an issue?  Is life

          in a persistent coma (and its expense) a reason for euthanasia?  Is the

          hardship of the caregiver to be considered?  Is “pull the plug”

          warranted?

 

Suicide:  960 men, women and children chose death by suicide when Roman soldiers were about to overtake the Masada fortress in Israel.  Is there “death before           dishonor”?  Does a person have the right to terminate his own life?  What about intolerable pain?   Or disruption of quality of life?

 

          War:  Are there such things as holy wars?  What about the issue of

          “pacifism”?

      Augustine said “Righteous wars may be defined as wars to avenge

                                wrongs...when a nation or state seeks to restore what

has been wrongfully seized.”   War is waged only to   

win peace.

               Calvin saw it “…only as punishment, whether to punish a

                             scoundrel or a king made no difference.”

 

Capital punishment:  The theologian points out that punishment is

always to  have as its goal the rehabilitation of the criminal, for this is

what forgiveness  is, and this is the meaning of God’s love.  The death  

penalty admits that neither the skill of man nor the mercy of God is

sufficient to avoid the punishment.

 

          The purpose of the punishment is to protect the community:  is death the only deterrent?  Does one balance the cost of life imprisonment with the value of  a human life?   Now that DNA is so often a factor, does this mean there is a greater chance to avoid mistakes in administering the death penalty?

 

So, what was the purpose of the commandment?  It was not intended to stop all killings.  The Jewish people themselves participated in many “holy wars”.  Often, as they claimed their “promised land”, they marched under the orders of God into war.  But, the wanton and indiscriminate killings had to cease.  Remember who these people who received the commandments were – recent slaves, tribal warriors (sometimes one tribe against another) maybe even some thugs and cut throats. Slaves are people who are treated inhumanly and cannot be expected to remain humane on their own.  When the flood gates opened out of Egypt, do you imagine that only the good people left?  Were all the slaves nice people who had just gotten into the wrong place at the wrong time.  The commandments were meant to give them the ability to become good and decent.  It didn’t mean that they had always been so.  After all, Moses was out of sight only a short time before they were bowing down again before gods of  their own creation. 

 

This commandment reminds us that life is sacred because it is in the image of God.  It calls for reverence of all life.  Life belongs to God and cannot be taken carelessly or with impunity.

 

You shall not commit adultery

 

All people are not created equal!  The Hebrew male arose each morning with a prayer on his lips, “Blessed art thou who made me not a gentile, a slave or a woman.”  The status of women was very fragile, to say the least.  She was regarded as a possession (see commandment ten); she could not eat with men (she stood and served); in the Temple and the synagogue, she was separated from the men and could not receive teaching from the Torah or Talmud; she could not own property, neither could she inherit from her father or her husband.  This is why, in scripture, she appears as a symbol poverty and helplessness so often.

 

Perhaps, then, it will not surprise you to know that according to the OT and the Ten Commandments, adultery was viewed as a woman’s sin:  “Adultery was the sexual relationship of a married woman with any man not her husband.”   A man could kill another man for laying with his wife, or he could simply “put her away” in divorce (as was the first thought of Joseph with Mary).  This was because she was his property, but it was also because “Go forth and be fruitful” was a command marriage was an essential part of the Jewish community.  of the Lord God in the Garden.  The difference in the concept of woman is most evident when you look at the people who surrounded the Jews at that time.

 

                   In Egypt a woman pledged to be married had to serve one

                   one as a temple prostitute immediately before her wedding.

 

                   In Greece, the temples built to honor Aphrodites, (the goddess

of love) housed a thousand priestesses who were no more than

temple prostitutes, their fees going to the temple treasury.

 

In Syria, there was a Feast Day for Attar, celebrated by woman

who prostituted themselves by soliciting strangers on the street

for that one day.

 

In Israel, during the time of the prophet Hosea temple prostitution had invaded even the Temple in Jerusalem.  In I Kings 14:21-24 we read that male prostitutes served in the Temple, as well.  Part of the great reform movement initiated by the boy king Josiah was the cleansing of the Temple of all such practices. (II Kings 23:7)

 

Why was all this emphasis on sex at the Temple?  Fertility and reproduction in an agrarian society – the cattle and the wheat and the woman who bore the sons who helped farm the ground - was very important, and they felt that God had to be involved in this; it was therefore considered an act of worship!

 

Look at the story of Hosea, an unforgettable picture of the faithlessness of the nation at that time.  Hosea is to marry a prostitute as a sign of the nation’s unfaithfulness. “Go take for yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord.”  (Hosea 1:2)

 

Does all this mean that men got off free in this commandment?  No, the very word itself comes from the root of the word which means “adulterate” or “contaminate or make impure”.  Adultery  makes impure all who are touched by it.  A society in which this is allowed cannot escape its impurity.

 

Of course, by the time of the New Testament, we have equality of punishment for man and woman, and for even thinking about it!

 

You shall not steal

 

          The last three commandments belong together:  they rule out major

          threats to the community.  When anybody or any institution takes

          away the life, the selfhood, the honor, or the goods of another, that

          is stealing, and the eighth commandment says “No!”[1]

 

There is a consideration that must be approached right at the beginning when we look at this commandment:  whose property is it?  From the first moments of creation, the Bible is very definite in this:  all, everything, belongs to the One who created it.  We are but stewards, custodians, caretakers of the property.  How is this emphasized in Scripture?   In Leviticus 25:8f, the Year of Jubilee is defined.  On every fiftieth year (the last one was 2000-1) certain things happened to remind the people that this is still God’s world.

 

     All land reverted to the original owners,

     attesting to the fact that nobody has exclusive

     rights to the property.

 

    All slaves were given freedom.

 

    All debts were rescinded.

 

Now the difficulty with this is that it was never followed.  The people created certain fictions, such as giving the power of their debt collection to the courts for a year.  They “sold” their land to a non-Jew for that year, for a shekel, only to buy it back.  In much the same way, during Passover when no fat was allowed in the house, the Jewish family will sell all their fat to a local pastor and he will sell it back to them when Passover is over – this keep the people from having to start all over again by stocking their kitchen.

 

The Bible is replete with stories that prove that it is not just poor people who steal (out of need) or bad people (who don’t know the difference between good and bad).  It is also kings and queens.  The story of David who steals the wife of Uriah and sends him to the battle where he will surely be killed is a good example of stealing, as well as other things.  When King Ahab wanted the vineyard of his neighbor but the neighbor wouldn’t sell, Queen Jezebel started rumors against him (blasphemy, she said), had him stoned to death (with his family) and then seized the property on behalf of the king.  She broke three commandments at the same time.  (false witness, murder and theft).

 

There is a controversy that says that all private property is theft.  The idea is that nobody has the right to privatize property because it was created for everybody.  Is this what Jesus was saying when he told the rich young ruler to “sell all that you have and give it to the poor”.  In an expanded version of that story, appearing in the Gospel to the Hebrews (and quoted by Origin, an early church father, in his commentary on Matthew) Jesus tells the Rich Young Ruler that he must “love his neighbor”, yet many of his neighbors are hungry and in rags at his front gate, while his house is full of objects that serve no good purpose except to serve his appetites. Does this mean that we should have nothing other than what is necessary to serve our needs?

 

          Another form of stealing is related to unfair consumption of the

          world’s goods.  Uneven distribution:  to have to much when

          some have too little.  There is also stealing from the next generation.

          What happens when fossil fuel runs out, when rain forests are

          depleted and climate change inhibits production of foodstuffs?[2]

 

Interestingly enough, the commandment was intended, apparently, to serve as a warning against kidnapping!  In that ancient time, kidnapping was not for ransom but for profit in the slave market.  You can ponder that for a moment and see why this would be wrong:  the life of the victim was given by God to that individual and was meant for freedom.  The kidnapper has interfered with the plan of God for that person.  (Ex 21:15)  It is a capital offense.

 

In short, “Bottom line;  if you haven’t bought it, earned it, inherited it, been given it –it belongs to somebody else and that’s where its supposed to stay.”[3]

 

You shall not bear false witness

 

“Sticks and stones might break my bones but words would never do it.”  In the words of an old song, “It ain’t necessarily so.”  Floyd Patterson, a former heavyweight champion of the world, once commented “You can hit me and I won’t think much of it, but you can say something to me and hurt me very much.”  To bear false witness is to use words as instruments of violence.

 

Let’s start with the New Testament first, and turn to the Letter from James.  “Do not speak evil against one another.”  (4:11)    James also tells us that the tongue is difficult to control and can do great damage: “So the tongue is a small member and boasts great things.  How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire.”  (3:5)

 

But what does this commandment say.  Obviously, it has a relation to the third commandment, taking the name of God in vain, making pledges one does not intend to fulfill, swearing on God’s name.  But, here we are talking about our relationships to one another.

 

Lying is not strictly forbidden in the Bible.  For instance, God tells Samuel to lie when the prophet is sent to the house of Jesse to find a new king.  Samuel fears that Saul, hearing the purpose of the visit, will strike out and kill him.  “Tell them that you are going to offer a bull as a sacrifice at Jesse’ altar.”  Saul’s son, Jonathan, lies to Saul (who is visibly insane by this time) in order to protect his friend, David.  But, in these cases, it is offered as protection to another.  When Leviticus offers additional information on the commandment, it says “do not be a talebearer against your neighbor”.  In modern society, we look down upon gossips: in the commandment, it is absolutely forbidden to pass along information that would hard your neighbor, whether it be a lie or truth!  Once again, the overarching information is to add, “You are to love your neighbor as yourself.”[4]

 

But this commandment is directed toward courtroom testimony.  All else seems to be an application of the commandment by later generations.  The intention of the commandment is to protect the community.  If one does not abide by truth, then “anything goes.”  Exodus 21:1-9 are the defining verses for this commandment, expanding on the meaning.

 

Dr. Ben Rose suggested that we look at what would happen it nature ever lied to us!

 

          If the laws of nature were capricious, that is, if they changed without

          notice or without reason, if plants did not produce oxygen, if the laws

          of gravity decided to take a vacation without notice, if tomatoes were

          edible one day and poison the next day, then human life would be

          impossible.[5]

 

So, a lie is wrong when it is contrary to the very nature of God and the universe.

 

You shall not covet

 

Up to now, the commandments have dealt with the outward actions one might take against another;  now we enter into inner thoughts!  As hard as it might be to control actions, how much more so is it to control inner thoughts.  Is it important?  The Apostle Paul thought is was the sin that gave birth to all other sins!

 

What is its definition?  “To covet something is to desire something which one does not have the right to have or possess.”

 

The Bible offers a good example.  When the battle of Jericho was fought, the command was that all things – people, cattle, and possessions – were to be destroyed (except for gold and silver which was to be taken and set aside for a time when a temple would be built).  A man named Achan did not do this:  he said he saw and coveted certain fine objects, brought them home and buried them under and outside his tent.  When the next battle, against the city of Ai, was lost, his actions were said to be the cause.  He had disobeyed God, and so he and his family were stoned to death.

 

The human spirit has always been covetous.  Adam and Eve coveted the apple that would give them the wisdom of right and wrong.  Cain coveted Abel’s easy way with God. Jacob coveted his brother’s birthright.  And on it goes!  Always wanting somebody’s else’s possession. To covet was the basis of King David’s sin with Bathsheba.  It was the basis of Jezebel’s sin with Navot.  It is not wrong to want a Jaguar convertible:  it is wrong to want your neighbor’s Jaguar convertible.  The average American is the recipient of more than 3000 advertisements a day.[6]  A rabbinic teaching: “Who is wealthy: the one content with life.”

 

Once again, it is a commandment directed at peace and tranquility in the community and in the family of God.  When there is anxiety between people, the peace of the society is threatened.

 

Why is this important enough to merit its own commandment?  All evil does not begin with our hands:  it begins with our heart.  “As a man thinketh, so is he!”   Thoughts can take a life of their own.

 

Moses is talking to the people and says “That’s a good question.  Let me go and ask.”  He returns a few hours later and tells them, “He says ‘Yes, you have to obey all of them all the time!`  That concludes the question and answer hour!”