The Ten Commandments - A Concise Introduction

By Khen Lim



Image Source: cinematheiapolis.com

For all the years that man has roamed and ruled the world, we never really realise the goodness of humanity that underpins life for 3,000 years. We’ve never had it this good before but we did have the basis from which to set our standards, our discipline, our benchmarks and/or our reference points if you must. 

We commonly know them as the Ten Commandments. Many think they’re out of date and impractical but they’ve never been more relevant than in today’s climes. It remains the best and most vindicated moral code the world has ever been gifted and yet people have not been treating it seriously.

Consider what a 23-year-old survey done by Newsweek had to say about moral decadence:

• When asked if adultery is wrong, 85 percent of ordinary Americans agreed. However only 49 percent of Hollywood TV writers and executives chimed in agreement.

• As to the question of whether women have rights to abortion, 59 percent of ordinary Americans thought so but at 97 percent, that is twice as many in Hollywood who believe so.

• When it came to religious affiliation, only 4 percent of ordinary Americans professed not to have any. On the other hand, there are overwhelmingly, more than ten times (45 percent) as many in Hollywood who share that view. 

That survey was done in July 20 1992. 23 years later, these figures are not expected to improve. The American moral decline is a reflection of the increasingly liberal views on loose living and the receding importance of Judeo-Christian values in the minds of those who are in the position to shape thinking and influence others. When Hollywood displays such alarming depravity, it is little wonder that TV viewers and moviegoers will be more and more swayed. And these figures are just a sliver of a far larger survey. Exactly what is the American view on same-sex marriage, transgenderism, adultery or even marijuana consumption today?

Why the Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments may be basic in its thrust but they still fathom the depths of our changing society. Even as our world keeps reshaping itself, increasingly these commandments continue to assert themselves, reminding us with profound instructions on how to lead a moral and upright life. The point that God had made when He gave these commandments to Moses was that if we had followed them faithfully, we would have no need for the massive complications that shackle our modern lives instead of liberating us.

Today we are bonded to our need for military or armed forces, police and all forms of law enforcement agencies because we need them to keep us safe. Our marriages and families are threatened by all sorts of outside forces including adultery, extramarital problems, gambling and covetousness and so on. Our faith is constantly battered by external attractions that many have pined after. If we had diligently followed the Ten Commandments, truth would have conquered everything and societies founded on God’s instructions would have been so different today.

It is these commandments that Western society and its course of civilisation and societal development was based on. Much of society’s myriad legal systems are intrinsically founded on them and their influence has permeated across to the judiciary throughout the rest of the world. No less today, we find the Ten Commandments to be equally as relevant as they were during the Mosaic era.

In brief, the Ten Commandments in line with the common Christian charter are as follows (based on Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:4-21):

1.             You shall have no other gods before Me

2.           You shall not make idols

3.           You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain

4.           Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy

5.            Honour your father and your mother

6.           You shall not murder

7.            You shall not commit adultery

8.           You shall not steal

9.           You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

10.       You shall not covet

The bedrock of civilisation

Nothing else in the recorded history of the world has been as significant as the Ten Commandments in influencing the development of humanity. In so many ways, they have changed the world and poised it in a more fruitful direction, helping civilisation to develop human and civil rights, paving the way for the dignity and rights of women to be recognised and vindicated the importance of abolishing slavery.

The Ten Commandments also inspired the reality of parliamentary democracy and are instrumental in instilling loyalty, engendering faith, garnering trust, upholding respect and honour and encouraging filial love at home and in the workplace. In nudging us closer to God, these commandments forges the values of fidelity in love and integrity in character among those who cherish them.

Without them, we would not have reason to be obedient or submissive. Instead it would be scary to contemplate what society today would have otherwise become, which is why their importance is hardly difficult to see. No matter how ‘archaic’ some – including Christians – say they are, every commandment still speaks to us as accurately as they did 3,000 years earlier. 

They are so applicable today that we have surety that these commandments undergird a good and just world, a world that we want liberated from tyranny, wickedness and debauchery.

What if the world embraces Ten Commandments?

Life as we know it today would have been drastically different if the world hadn’t heard of the Ten Commandments. As it is, it may have heard of them but it has been less than successful in fully embracing them. If it did, the world would have been unrecognisable compared to what we know of it today.

The most conspicuous difference would be no crime of any form anywhere. Our sense of freedom would be strange because we would be liberated from any dangers. Without murders, thefts, robberies, rapes, heists, frauds, embezzlements or kidnappings, we would not be burdened by the presence of police, armies and security guards and we would have no need to be armed with deadly weapons or even pepper sprays. We would have a level of responsibility, civic-mindedness and ethical integrity that is in keeping with society requirements.

Families will thrive, spouses will love and be faithful, children will be obedient and workplaces will become productive because the Ten Commandments keep us all upright, honest, noble and trustworthy. Nothing will tempt us to be covetous; not our neighbours or spouses, not one another’s wealth and marriages will not risk divorces. No one will condone lying, no matter how convenient, small or white. Nothing will distract our attention from God.

Not from man

But here’s the caveat – none of the Ten Commandments is man derived. Man did not invent any of them. Man did not dream them up. He did not pick them up from a movie. These are commandments that were handed down to us by an indisputable Authority that is clearly more supreme, higher, greater and more exalted than any man, any government, any royalty or any mortal power the world has ever seen.

In Exodus 20:1 (NASB) prior to the listing of the Ten Commandments is the verse, “Then God spoke all these words…,” an attestation that these commandments were given to us by our Father in Heaven. Indeed these were His words and nobody else’s.

And because they came from God, man has no ownership or dominion over them. Man cannot say that the one who gives them to us is a sinner and they are not worth adhering. We certainly don’t get to slam the person for telling us we cannot murder and yet he turns around and shoots someone dead.

None of the commandments can also be challenged because of the imperfection of the fallen man. They are given perfectly by a perfect God who is neither fallen nor flawed. And if man were to have conceived them, then man can also un-invent them by contesting, debating, disproving and even rebelling. As we have consistently seen, man’s theories are constantly being turned upside down and then even turned back the right side-up. But that never happens with God’s commandments.

As it is, the Ten Commandments were given to us by God to inherit and herein lies the indispensable fact – because He is the Giver of these life’s laws, every bit of it is inerrant. On the other hand when man were to say that covetousness is wrong, someone somewhere could say it isn’t and there will be no one fit to decide who is and isn’t right. But because our God is perfection personified, there is absolutely no debate. What He says goes. Every single one of the Ten Commandments is given perfectly.

The inextricable link between truth and God

In the many centuries that separate us from 3,000 years ago, it is considered common knowledge that stealing is wrong. It might not be very apparent in the days of Moses but it should be part of our popular wisdom. Yet many non-believers will suggest that you don’t need the Ten Commandments to tell us that; that common knowledge means commonsense and commonsense implies it’s a no-brainer.

What they’re trying to say is that we don’t have to believe in God to know that stealing is wrong. Ask any atheist or a non-Christian, and they’ll tell you, of course stealing is wrong. Ask a convict doing time in jail and he’ll agree too. But here’s a counterpoint fact for you – the fundamental truth that stealing is wrong comes from God. It certainly did not come from man. It was God who told us a long time ago and that part of the truth transcended time through the ages, passed on from one heritage to another and spread right across the world and landed on our feet today. It was all God’s work in the first place.

It is untrue to not attribute the wisdom to God. All these codes of life and moral values had not come from thin air. They did not just appear out of nowhere. It was God who taught humanity what is right and wrong. All of us, regardless of where we’re from, who our ancestors were, and what we believe or do not believe in today, had long required God to teach us these moral codes and more. And if anyone of us needs reminding, to hijack that from Him is a very serious infraction.

Atheists might want to check their logic here – without God, there will be no Ten Commandments. And if that were the case, no one in the world will be able to figure out right from wrong. The absence of discernment will breed chaos and anarchy in society. A world without God leaves it without law and order because the fundamental code of moral life will have been missing and we’d be groping in the dark, trying to figure out where we stand and who offers the best answer.

There is no knowing without God. If the moral code had not come from Him, then we would be arguing forever, trying forever trying to avoid a stalemate simply because instead of incontestable benchmarks, we have personal beliefs and opinions, a whole lot of hearsay, taboos, superstitions and fancy-talk. Rather than dealing with facts, Godless wisdom will revolve around gossips, rumours and kitchen tales. The whole world will be nothing but one big horrific tête-à-tête of indefinite tittle-tattle prattle.

Life will just be swinging from one theory to another and back again. One day, we’ll all agree and the next day, we’ll be arguing. And when we believe something is right, someone comes and tells us he disagrees because he doesn’t feel that it’s right. Some people actually think that wife-swapping is acceptable. There are others who think that polygamy is fair game. There are also others who believe that roughing up the wife is a husband’s right to discipline. Yet we know one thing – all of these are man-made rules; none from God.

The simple truth is that if God is not in charge, then anyone can make up all sorts of rules to suit them. All it takes is for every individual to impose his personal will. And invariably that’s how we end up having the powerful abusing the weak and the meek. The rich will yoke the impoverished. Those who make the rules will always have authority over those who don’t have the opportunities. Life will be cheap because murder can be bought but only by those who are rich and powerful.

Discerning what we believe from what we know

As modern man is bent on replacing the old with the new, it is determined to replace ‘ancient morality’ with a completely different approach to life. Disbanding with the conservative, liberalists are resolute in pushing the liberal agenda that aims squarely at denying God His moral values for us. What we have in the end is a new set of progressive morals that are essentially founded on what one believes or feels. It does not matter if you know; if you sense it’s good, it has to be good.

Someone once said, “Why does something that feels so good is so wrong?” We could be talking about a wide range of possible subjects here. It could be premarital sex or even adultery (sex with a married person). It could even be stealing from someone to give to someone else.

The crux of the matter is people are now saying “I believe, and therefore I’m right.” You don’t need proof; you only need to have a hunch or a strong sense of justification within yourself. Taking God out of the equation, the Ten Commandments become irrelevant and irreverent. In their place, people only need to feel good to believe.

The problem with this approach is that what a person believes does not make him right. It certainly doesn’t mean it’s the truth. For example, there have been decades of indoctrination against Creationism, with countless intellectuals and scientists pushing the agenda that God is not the Creator. It has become so dominant and yet there has not been one shred of evidence that they’re right. Still it is the predominant moral truth that is propagated today. Why? Because people think they believe they’re right.

There is a God and there are plenty of proofs everywhere you look. He is the undeniable Giver of the Ten Commandments. Morality therefore isn’t just a matter of opinion or hearsay. It is not a choice – you don’t get to say whether or not you believe because God is never wrong.

The ruinous effects of people trying to orchestrate their own belief systems without God has plenty of parallels in the history of humanity. One needs to look no further than the Communist rule for a good example. Other than that, there is always the tragic German Third Reich that cost the lives of 6 million Jews. In both cases, Godless governments determine the moral code for their people. Invariably because they hold the power over the population, they serve out two laws – one for themselves and one for the others. Their belief systems became demagogical ideologies that in the end, manifested themselves into deadly and corrupted political orders.

In place of God, despotic leaders deify their roles and determine who lives and who won’t. North Korea’s Kim dynasty is probably today’s best and most infamous example but there have been many others who are similarly brutal and inhuman. When you find yourself working under such leadership, you will be submissive to a moral code that God has no part to play in.

And if the command is to murder, you basically take up arms to do as you’re told. You may think this is morally wrong but your government obviously doesn’t. Here is a case where you feel is an immoral thing to do but you still go about doing it. You know it’s wrong. Your government on the other hand, doesn’t. All involved are men. Nothing here involved God.

And here is where things get worse. Living in a troubled world, many of us may be morally aware and yet we still go on doing the wrong things. It seems that while we believe we are our best judge, we sometimes still can’t tell right from wrong.

Why is this so? Because we can. When God gave us free will, His hope is that we would choose to love and be obedient and then submit our will back to Him. Instead what millions have been doing is to do whatever we feel we like to. When we do things wrong, some of us don’t think much of it and that is often because we think no one is watching. Those who do not believe God exists consider this the perfect convenient foil – with reckless abandon, we just do what comes next to our minds. Apology is optional. Remorse is non-existent. With no God watching, who cares anyway.

Those among us in whom God exists, things are quite different. We know He watches every word we say, everything we do, every act we commit including those we try so desperately to hide. He remembers our sins as much as the things we do right. Nothing escapes His attention. Think back to the days of 1 Samuel with David reigning Israel. Think of David who had just committed adultery with Bathsheba. Think how he sought to have her husband, Uriah the Hittite, conveniently killed at the battlefront. And then imagine how he must have felt when Nathan the prophet admonished him for all that he had committed.

David thought he could have walked away unnoticed but he had blood on his hands. He was filled with contrition because Nathan reminded him that God knew everything. If David were an atheist, nothing Nathan had said would bother him. But the reminder of God forced him to repent and turn things right but not without a hefty price to pay.

In the end, there is unanimous agreement that even atheists accept, that the world needs to be rooted in sound moral integrity. And by centring on the Ten Commandments, we have a sense of moral relativity that gives everyone the same opportunity to shape a better and more conscionable world.

Ethical or Ritual Decalogue?

As we prepare ourselves to delve into the next issue, there is still the matter of determining if there are versions of the same thing. Apparently there are.

Broadly speaking, there are three – Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew (Talmud) – but there are certainly many other variations available including the Septuagint, Philo, Augustine, Lutherans as well as the more divergent Muslim variant. Let’s also not forget that there appear to be dissimilarities between the first and the second set of tablets. Remember that Exodus 20 records the first ones given by God to Moses in which he broke in anger. Exodus 34 tells us of the second pair of tablets that found their way into the Ark of the Covenant.

Here is a look at these two dissimilar Ten Commandments:

#	Exodus 20:2-17 (KJV)	Exodus 34:14-26 (NASB)
1.	I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.	You shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose Name is Jealous, is a jealous God – otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice, and you might take some of his daughters for your sons and his daughters might play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods.
2.	Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.	You shall make for yourself no molten gods.
3.	Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain.	You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days, you are to eat unleavened bread as I commanded you at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in the month of Abib, you came out of Egypt.
4.	Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.	The first offspring from every womb belongs to Me and all your male livestock, the first offspring from cattle and sheep. You shall redeem with a lamb the first offspring from a donkey; and if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.
5.	Honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.	You shall work six days but on the seventh day, you shall rest; even during ploughing time and harvest you shall rest.
6.	Thou shalt not kill.	You shall celebrate the Feast of weeks, that is, the first fruits of the wheat harvest and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. For I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your borders and no man shall covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before the Lord your God.
7.	Thou shalt not commit adultery.	You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leavened bread…
8.	Thou shalt not steal.	…nor is the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover to be left over until morning.
9.	Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.	You shall bring the very first of the first fruits of your soil into the house of the Lord your God.
10.	Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.	You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

If we read our Bible correctly and understand the goings-on in the time between Exodus 20 and 34, we know there unfolded some important events. When Moses returned with the first two tablets given to him by God, he broke them in anger at the sight of the golden calf that his people had made in order to idolise. That they made this in his absence probably revealed their innate depravity, which brought on the second event, which was when God made the second set of tablets as described in Exodus 34.

With the eventuality of having two tablets – one resulting from the other – there is reason to compare them. In this comparison, it can be said that the both appear different. Known also as a Decalogue, the Ten Commandments between the first and the second differ only because of the circumstances. The first Ten Commandments – the ones that the world is familiar with – are known collectively as the Ethical Decalogue but the second set is referred to as the Ritual Decalogue.

Both are meant to be the parallel of one another but the Ritual Decalogue is more intended to be a narrative of the renewal of the covenant, which God deemed important as a result of the golden calf incident. In other words the Ritual Decalogue is meant to be an annexure. Take note also that Moses is commanded to write the Ritual Decalogue but on the other hand, it is God who would write the new copy of the Ethical Decalogue (34:1,28).

Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5?

If that isn’t complex enough, the Bible also has another version of the Ten Commandments posted in Deuteronomy 5. Unlike Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 5 draws strong parallels but why. Why have a third version when we already have two? What is it about? Is it necessary and should we know about it?

We don’t have the space to delve deeply into Deuteronomy 5 but nonetheless, the main thing we need to know at this stage is that it is meant for a different set of people with different experiences to those that were the subject of Exodus 20.

Exodus 20 was meant to relate to Israelites that were freshly released from bondage in Egypt. Hence they were basic rules, teaching His people how to behave. However the incident with the golden calf changed that, resulting in Exodus 34 with its emphasis on rituals as God focused on pulling His people away from pagan worshipping.

On the other hand, Deuteronomy 5 is aimed at a new generation of Israelites who were born in the wilderness. They would enter the Promised Land where their accursed ancestors have perished. However none of them had any first-hand knowledge of their ancestors’ time of slavery in Egypt or the miracles they encountered. While their forefathers understood the truth of God as their Creator, the younger ones now had to be taught the reminder of the Sabbath.

The Ten Commandments they would be acquainted with would serve a different purpose as they were then poised to cross the Jordan and into the unknown perils of the Promised Land. On the other hand, the original commandments represented two things – the redemption of the earlier Israelites and their creation as a covenanted nation.

Reformed Christian or Jewish Talmud?

There is never any doubt that the original Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 remain the benchmark for God’s moral codes for the whole world but the question now is which version we should adhere to. This question reflects the existing variations of which, in our case, is a decision between the Protestant Christian and the Judaist.

The Protestant Christian’s version of the Exodus 20 Ten Commandments fundamentally follows John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, which again, is mostly adherent to the Philo of Alexandria version, which has its original basis in the Septuagint that is followed by Orthodox Christians. There are variations among these but the relational relevance is there from the modern Christian take all the way back to the Septuagint origins.

On the other hand, the Judaist position is the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi), which the Jews revere as the core of Rabbinic Judaism. An important aspect of the Judaist version is that we view the Ten Commandments in their original language, Hebrew, where we are able to capture the gist of its message and meaning. In contrast the Protestant version has endured numerous translations and depending on which one you read, the subtle variations may exist.

Where we know them as the Ten Commandments, the Jews call them, the ‘Ten Statements.’ This is because the Talmud makes the ‘prologue’ its first ‘statement’ or ‘saying,’ combining the prohibition on idol and deity worshipping. According to NASB, the prologue verse in Exodus 20 is “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (v.2).” This is then followed by the next verse, which is, “You shall have no other gods before Me (v.3).”

In other words the Jewish believe that verse 2 is the first statement and hence, the first of the Ten Commandments and since the original language of the Old Testament is Hebrew, it makes a lot of sense to study them from that perspective. In fact as we shall see in the first issue, this first statement is so very important that without it, the rest of the commandments don’t make any sense at all.

Here’s how different people view the Ten Commandments and the order they place them in:

Next issue:

First Commandment (Statement) – I am the Lord your God