"Ten Words," Part 3
Notes
Transcript
The first four-tenths of the Ten Words are directed to the proper recognition of the relationship between Israel and Yahweh. Six-tenths of the Ten Words are now directed to relationships among people. Human beings are in God’s image. The way God’s people relate to God’s image (other persons) expresses how they relate to him as well. Because of this unique theological dimension of this theological anthropology of humans, persons are to be treated in a special way. To relate to God appropriately, people must relate properly to their fellow human being in his image (cf. Prov 14:31; 1 John 2:9–11)
He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker, But he who is gracious to the needy honors Him.
The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
IV. Right Relations With Society, vs. 10-17.
IV. Right Relations With Society, vs. 10-17.
A. Honor your parents, v.12.
A. Honor your parents, v.12.
What does this mean? It involves:
Prizing them highly (cf. Prov. 4:8; i.e wisdom),
“Prize her, and she will exalt you; She will honor you if you embrace her.
Caring, showing affection for them (Psalm 91:15; i.e. as God honors individuals),
“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
Respect and reverence (Lev. 19:3).
‘Every one of you shall reverence his mother and his father, and you shall keep My sabbaths; I am the Lord your God.
In the NT, we are commanded to “obey your parents,” immediately and necessarily followed by the qualifier “in the Lord. We are to show our parents honor (Eph. 6:2), but nowhere is their word to rival or be a substitute for God’s word. The promise in Eph. 6 that is attached to this command to revere one’s parent is unique even though there is a sense in which the promise of life stands over all the commandments seen over and over again as repeated in Deuteronomy. The promise of a long life in the land of promise is Israel’s. Israel’s captivity was caused, in part, by a failure to honor their parents (Ezekiel 22:7, 15).
“They have treated father and mother lightly within you. The alien they have oppressed in your midst; the fatherless and the widow they have wronged in you.
“I will scatter you among the nations and I will disperse you through the lands, and I will consume your uncleanness from you.
The present day application of this command is like all the others, giving us a new quality of life without creating a merit system to gain eternal life.
B. Murder is forbidden, v. 13.
B. Murder is forbidden, v. 13.
All men and women have been created in the image of God. The verb used here for murder appears 47 times in the OT, usually where the factors of premeditation and intentionality are present. This prohibition does not apply to beasts (Genesis 9:3), to defending one’s home from night-time burglars (Exodus 22:2), to accidental killings (Deut. 19:5), to the state’s execution of murderers (Gen. 9:6), or to involvement with one’s nation in certain types of war as illustrated by Israel’s history.
It does apply to self-murder (i.e. suicide), to all accessories to murder (2 Sam. 12:9), ...
‘Why have you despised the word of the Lord by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.
… and to those who have authority but fail to use it to punish known murders (1 Kings 21:19).
“You shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Have you murdered and also taken possession?” ’ And you shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “In the place where the dogs licked up the blood of Naboth the dogs will lick up your blood, even yours.” ’ ”
These are done without divine authorization, in opposition to God’s authority and ownership.
C. Do not commit adultery, v. 14.
C. Do not commit adultery, v. 14.
Adultery was clearly a very serious offense in ancient Israel. In this context, it is close to the fifth commandment in its focus, which is the protection of the family. The seventh commandment is endorsed in so many ways throughout the Bible. As one example, the wisdom tradition characteristically looks to the consequences of adulterous liaisons and observes the disastrous social effects on a man’s whole family, substance, and standing in the covenant community (Prov 2:16–19; 5:1–23; 6:23–35; 7:1–27). Wisdom also anticipates the way Jesus discerned the roots of adultery in lustful looks (Prov 6:25; Job 31:1, 9–12)
The phrase used here can be used of men and women. The punishment for adultery is death (Deut. 22:22); ...
“If a man is found lying with a married woman, then both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; thus you shall purge the evil from Israel.
… the punishment for the seduction of a virgin is an offer of marriage or money (Exodus 22:16-17; Deut. 22:23-29), thereby distinguishing adultery from fornication in the OT.
“If a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged, and lies with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife.
“If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the dowry for virgins.
Adultery is not just a question of violating another person’s property, but is also a moral question (See Gen. 20:9 and Gen. 39:9). Otto Procksch observed that a “man can commit adultery against a marriage other than his own, the woman only against her own.”
In Israel adultery was anything but a private or merely civil concern. “… Adultery strikes at the very heart and stability of the household by shattering the sexual integrity of the marriage.… This explains why it is so frequently singled out by the prophets for condemnation and why it is included in the Decalogue—because both were concerned above all to preserve the relationship between Israel and Yahweh, which they saw to be threatened at its familial roots by the crime of adultery.” (Wright , God’s People, 206-207)
D. Stealing is prohibited, v. 15.
D. Stealing is prohibited, v. 15.
This eighth commandment prohibits stealing from either a person or an object. This commandment recognizes that the LORD owns everything in heaven and earth (Psalm 24:1; 115:16) and only He can give it or take it away. To take from another his property then is ultimately to steal from God, thereby violating the covenant.
No man must despotically enslave or kidnap his fellow man or take the rights to property he has not owned or been given.
This is one of two commandments that does not have capital punishment for the covenant-breaker for . In normal Israelite judicial practice (excluding exceptional cases like Achan, where Israel was operating under the strict laws of “holy war”), no kind of theft of property carried the death penalty. Only theft of persons (i.e. kidnapping, usually for selling the victim into slavery) was a capital offense (Exod. 21:16; Deut. 24:7).
“If a man is caught kidnapping any of his countrymen of the sons of Israel, and he deals with him violently or sells him, then that thief shall die; so you shall purge the evil from among you.
Ordinary Israelite law could not put a person to death for stealing. Many laws from other ancient Near East nations had a wide range of penalties, including some very nasty mutilations and death, for different kinds of theft; plus the penalty’s severity would depend on the social rank of the offended party.
Here the superiority of Israel’s laws is seen in this area: humans are of more value than things.
E. Do not despise truth, v. 16.
E. Do not despise truth, v. 16.
This commandment speaks to the area where truth matters the most – in the courts where judgments and decisions which will impact lives are determined.
When false witnesses are brought forth, or when truth is sidelined, justice will not be served, and the preservation of society will falter. One of the primary targets of prophetic anger against Israel was the corruption of the judicial system, along with spiritual idolatry and economic oppression. The tale of Naboth in 1 Kings 21 illustrates the breach of the first, third, sixth, eighth, ninth, and tenth commandments in the ninth century B.C. In the eighth century, the prophet Amos complains that justice is turned to wormwood in “the gate” (the public place where courts convened) and truthful witnesses were hated and intimidated (Amos 5:7, 10, 12-13).
For those who turn justice into wormwood And cast righteousness down to the earth.”
They hate him who reproves in the gate, And they abhor him who speaks with integrity.
For I know your transgressions are many and your sins are great, You who distress the righteous and accept bribes And turn aside the poor in the gate.
Therefore at such a time the prudent person keeps silent, for it is an evil time.
Even though the word primarily reflects the legal process in Israel, the commandment calls for the sanctity of truth in every area of life. Despising the truth is to despise God whose very being and character are truth. When lying becomes endemic, when truth is seen as a mere option, then there is a terrible cost to individuals and society as a whole.
F. Do not covet, v. 17.
F. Do not covet, v. 17.
Here we see the Decalogue ends where every sin begins. This 10th commandment deal with man’s inner heart. It shows that none of the previous nine commandments could be observed merely from an external act, but that every inner instinct that led up to the act itself was included. AS the last, it is the climax; since coveting is a form of wrongly directed love, it puts people or other things in the place where only God should be. In this sense then, the commandments come full circle. To break the tenth is to break the first: covetousness is idolatry.
This radical nature of the tenth commandment (the root of many forms of human wickedness) is fully endorsed in the NT. Jesus warned about the dangers of covetous greed (Luke 12:13-21).
Paul fastened on the tenth commandment as the one that awakened his awarness of sin Romans 7:7. James recognized the insidious and far-reaching effects of covetousness as the fount producing behavior that breaks the other commandments (James 4:1-3).
We saw that the eighth commandment is exceptional in that it did not carry a death penalty for breaking it. Nevertheless, theft was certainly punished in various ways in the courts. The tenth commandment is even more exceptional, however; indeed, it is quite unique,
“for no legal penalties existed at all in any human court of the Old Testament period for coveting—or mere evil intention of any sort. This is not to deny that evil intention, including coveting, was regarded as sin. It undoubtedly was, and as such was liable to divine judgment.39 The point here is that the Tenth Commandment prohibits as being incompatible with loyalty to Yahweh something which could not by its very nature be sanctioned by actual legal penalties. This very fact underlines the importance of this prohibition, since in this respect it is unique among the commandments. The full significance of the Tenth Commandment, however, lies deeper yet.…
In addition to prohibiting something not liable to legal penalty, it prohibited something which could be “realized” in practical deed without necessarily breaking the law. It was (and remains) possible to fulfill a covetous desire without doing anything technically illegal. The Tenth Commandment, therefore, provides that radical thrust to the Decalog which distinguishes it from mere legislation, for it indicates that, while having done nothing illegal by human standards, a person can nevertheless be morally guilty before God.” (Wright, God’s People, 138)
THe point is, no matter the object of illicit desire, coveting what does not belong to you is to behave even in your thoughts in a way that breaks the boundaries of covenant loyalty — whether or not you pursue that coveting to its desired end by taking it for yourself. God looks on the heart and sees the thoughts and desires that lie there.
V. Response and Reassurance, vs. 18-21.
V. Response and Reassurance, vs. 18-21.
A. The response of the people: terror, vs. 18-19.
What must have been an awe-inspiring phenomena that marked the appearance of the LORD, depicted in 19:16-19 brought a reaction from the children of Israel . This restatement is from the perspective of their reactions to what they saw: the people were terrified. The phrase “the mountain smoking” is explained later in Deut. 5:23 ; the mountain “was burning with fire.”
Verse 19 with Exodus 19:9, 20:22, Deut. 5:22-26, Hebrews 12:19 indicate that the people heard the words of the LORD. Hearing these words, the people at the base of the mountain suddenly had no desire to approach God’s holy presence. They did sense their need for someone to do it for them; a mediator or one who would be their representative. From this realized need comes one of the greatest revelations in the long line of OT promises concerning the Messiah’s coming found in Deuteronomy 18:15-22; cf. also Deut. 5:24-25. The people now “stood at a distance,” and Moses delivered God’s word to them.
B. Moses reassures the people, vs. 20-21.
Moses told the children of Israel to not be “afraid.” This fear spoken of here is a tormenting fear, coming from conscious guilt or unwarranted alarm, leading to bondage. The expression “do not fear” is a comforting phrase given to the Israelites. The reason: God had not come to kill Israel (cf. Deut. 5:2-25) but to “test” her… to put Israel to the test to ascertain her nature, including imperfections, faults, or other qualities. This was to be done so the Israelites would develop an attitude of complete trust and belief in God, which would keep them from sinning. this is the demonstration of the “fear of the LORD” beginning back in Gen. 22:12.
So Moses, as Israel’s newly appointed mediator (v. 19) “approached the thick cloud where God was” while the people “stood at a distance,” waiting for the directives contained in the book of the covenant, which are recorded in Exodus 20:22-23:33.