The Ten Commandments
For over 3000 years, the Ten Commandments have been the standard by which Jews and Christians have lived by. Nations, kingdoms, and empires have modeled their laws after them. Many people, even secular, can list these commands, though maybe not in order. But in a world increasingly rejecting these rules, even people in the church have begun to suggest the Commands are not relevant today. But is this true? Are the Ten Commandments not relevant to modern believers or modern society? An in-depth view may prove contrary to this belief. Though it must be prefaced that ancient laws are different from modern laws. The ancient laws, including in the Bible, did not try to restructure the society, but restructured how people acted and lived in whatever society they were a part of. “While biblical laws describe a society very much rooted in the ancient world, God calls his people to higher standards,”¹ as He does today. He addresses the people in society as it is and provides a way for holy living within that society. Ancient and Biblical laws are a topic for another essay, but one could view that the laws changed the person, rather than the society. And with the person changed, others would see their good works and glorify their Father who is in heaven.
The Ten Commandments are found in Exodus 20:1–17. “Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. Do not have other gods besides me. Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands. Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God, because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work — you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy. Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not give false testimony against your neighbor. Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
The first commandment is verses 2–3. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. Do not have other gods besides me” Actually, the first commandment is verse three, do not have other gods besides me. But God begins this with a preface of what He just did for the Israelites. He had just delivered them from slavery in Egypt. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.” This is significant in context to the Israelites because they had just witnessed 10 plagues to change the Pharaoh’s mind to free them from slavery, they had just walked through the sea, completely dry, and they had witnessed the Egyptian army be swallowed by the same sea. In short, they had just been witnesses to a once in a lifetime miracle. They had been in slavery for 400 years and were crying out to be freed as they were unable to rid the chains of the Pharaoh on their own. They needed a savior. Think about this today. A sinner cannot break free from the chains of sin by their own strength. Only a savior can free you from sin.
When commemorating the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Moses states, “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.” (Exodus 13:3). God alone brought them out of Egypt. It was not by anything the Isrealites did that they were delivered, but only by God’s command. He single-handedly delivered the Isrealites, so only He should be the one praised and worshiped for it. The leaven or yeast in the bread can represent many things. In context, it means haste. Nomads traditionally ate unleavened bread as there was no time for them to wait for the bread to rise since they were always moving around.² Since the Israelites became nomads in the wilderness this applied to them in addition to the haste they made when quickly leaving Egypt. But leaven is also an additive. Just as God alone freed the Israelites, and they couldn’t add anything to their freedom. So the bread should not have anything added to it. As God spoke through Hosea, “But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior.” (Hosea 13:4) There is only one Savior and only one Redeemer. A person cannot save nor redeem themself.
So, God is reminding them of this to tell them that He is the one in authority, that He is the savior and that He is in control. Their objective is to obey Him and trust in Him. Since God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt over 3000 years ago, someone today could make the claim that this commandment is not relevant today. How is that relevant to me? While people are not in physical slavery in Egypt today, people are still in slavery all over the world. The biggest slave owner in this world, as mentioned above, is sin. In Romans 6 Paul discusses how before coming to Christ a person is a slave to sin and the works of the flesh. So, let’s change the wording of the preface to the first commandment to make it more relevant. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of sin; I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the world and the ways of the world; I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the darkness and evil. But let’s personalize it even more. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of addiction; I am the Lord your God who brought you out of depression; I am the Lord your God who brought you out of hopelessness; I am the Lord your God who brought you out of meaninglessness, isolation and confusion.
Several more statements like this could be written, but the point is clear. God still delivers from slavery whether physical or spiritual. And this is still grounds to obey the first commandment. But it is not just deliverance that God does. He does what others cannot. When Moses met God on the mountain for the first time, God told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”” (Exodus 3:14) This was in response to Moses asking His name to tell the Israelites. The translation can also be I AM That Which I AM, or I Will Be Howsoever I Will Be. The name God gives Moses is subject for intense theological, etymological, historical, and cultural study. But for the sake of scope and succinctness, this name can be boiled down to an open-ended answer that can only be properly understood from God’s self-revelation.³ God is. And He is all that we need. All throughout Scripture we find this, and we find other names given to Him in conjunction with this. He is — He exists, but He is also our righteousness, our shepherd, our provider and so on. One could say that He tells Moses, ‘I Will Be what you need.’ Or even ‘I Will Be all that is necessary no matter the situation, as the situation occurs.’ Because He is what we need, we have no need for anything outside of Him such as another deity that can do something for us. We have no need to worship anyone else but YHWH.
Only from walking with God, from reading His word does He reveal Himself to us. Moses learned this and wrote Psalm 90 about it. If you need someone to listen, He will listen. If you need a friend who is there, He is there and sticks closer than a brother. If you need guidance, He will guide you. If you need the strength to do something, He will strengthen you. If you are worried, He will comfort you. This may sound too good to be true, or even like an imaginary friend. But this is so much more. Human imagination cannot do what the creator of that imagination can do. There is a real presence that can be felt. And if you can’t or don’t feel that presence, someone once said, ‘facts don’t care about your feelings.’ If your feelings tell you otherwise, that there is no God, or that He is not here or doesn’t care, His Word says otherwise. No other book describes the human condition and nature like the written Word of YHWH. And no other book offers hope like the written Word of YHWH. And this written Word emphasizes time and time again that God is with us, that He is there, and there is no place that He isn’t. He is there in the pain, in the loneliness, in the depression, in the pit of rock bottom and loss. He is with you in an ever isolating and marginalized society.
The Hebrew word for me (do not have other gods besides me) means face, or in the context of this verse, presence.⁴ So, God is basically saying, ‘you shall not have any other gods in my presence.’ And since the Lord is omnipresent, and all seeing, there is no where you can go where you can worship other gods. So, the first commandment, do not have other gods besides me, warrants an exclusive relationship with this God. All that we need is in Him, and only He is worthy of worship, praise, and devotion. Not just for what He can do, but for who He is. He is worthy of our love, devotion, adoration, and worship, not just because of what He can do, but because of His goodness, that He is lovely and wonderful in Himself. But it is this exclusivity that causes issues today. Only Monotheists have an exclusivity as they believe there is only one God who is the exclusive creator and supreme being, and specifically only the Abrahamic faiths have a special exclusivity that their God is the only way to follow and provides the only way to be in right standing with Him. While each differs on what that way is, and regardless that there is truly only one way, the fact of exclusivity remains.
The universalist society of today does not like exclusivity in anything let alone in devotion and worship. Polygamy has always existed, and is traditionally frowned upon, but now it has been “upgraded” to polyamory.⁵ Today’s culture wants to become more inclusive. And so, anything that is exclusive or even gives a hint of exclusivity, except for certain groups and organizations, is frowned upon. But some things are meant to be exclusive. Ask someone who has been cheated on in a relationship how that felt, or someone who was betrayed by a close friend or even relative. We may try to allow anything and permit all sorts of things, but when push comes to shove, we eventually get hurt and we don’t like it. Why can’t we all go to heaven or be right with God? Because the goal is holiness, which is exclusivity. Holiness means to be set apart, essentially it means to be exclusive. Rather than worshiping deities that are too much like us in their nature, the goal is to be like the holy God that is entirely different and out of reach for us. That is why it is exclusive. He is out of reach, and only He can provide a way, and He did provide a way. One single exclusive, yet inclusive way. It is inclusive in that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But it is exclusive in the life that this call implies.
But let’s look at the other side of this command. The command itself is in the negative (NO other gods). But the positive is worship YHWH. “I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, love the Lord your God, obey him, and remain faithful to him. For he is your life, and he will prolong your days as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”” (Deuteronomy 30:19–20) The first commandment is not just a command to forsake other gods and worship Him. It is also a command to choose Him, to choose life. The God of Israel is the God of life. He is the creator of life, the giver of life, and protector of life. All life flows through Him and is sustained by Him (Colossians 1). He is the one who blesses and provides. He is the one who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24). He is the one who will never leave you nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:8). So, this command is not just a statement on who He is and what He has done, it is an invitation to choose Him, to forge a relationship with Him and learn and to know Him.
Who can do what He can do? In the Song of Moses, Moses begs the question of Who is like the Lord? “Lord, who is like you among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, revered with praises, performing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, and the earth swallowed them. With your faithful love, you will lead the people you have redeemed; you will guide them to your holy dwelling with your strength.” (Exodus 15:11–13) There is no other true deity than YHWH. Any other acclaimed deity is nothing compared to Him. And He makes this clear all throughout Scripture and in His self-revelation, but in the context of the Exodus, the other gods were indicted for their inability to prevent or repair what YHWH had done. Many scholars believe that each of the 10 plagues was an indictment of a particular Egyptian god. This is backed up by the fact that God Himself states that He will bring judgment to the other gods in Exodus 12:12, and in Numbers 33:3–4 where it states that He did indeed bring judgment upon the Egyptian gods. While there are several issues with correlating specific gods to each plague since some deities held distinct functions that were not just limited to each plague for example,⁶ it is interesting to view a possible list to show that there is no other like YHWH.
Get Bryce Nolen’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Plague 1: The Nile River turning to blood (Exodus 7:14–25), could be directed to the gods Hapi,⁷ Isis,⁸ Khnum,⁹ and possibly others; all deities and guardians with connections the sacred river.
Plague 2: Frogs (Exodus 8:1–15), could be directed to the goddess Heqet who is depicted with a frog’s head.¹⁰
Plague 3: Gnats (Exodus 8:16–19) could be directed to the god Set; god of deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners.¹¹
Plague 4: Flies (Exodus 8:20:32), could be directed to the god Uatchit,¹² associated with flies.
Plague 5: Death of Livestock (Exodus 9:1–7), could be directed to Hathor¹³ and Apis¹⁴ often depicted as a cow and bull respectively.
Plague 6: Boils (Exodus 9:8–12), could be directed to Sekhmet,¹⁵ and Isis; deities over disease and healing.
Plague 7: Hail (Exodus 9:13–35) could be directed to Nut,¹⁶ Osiris,¹⁷ and Set;¹⁸ deities of the sky, crops/agriculture, and storms, respectively.
Plague 8: Locusts (Exodus 10:1–20), could be directed to Nut and Osiris, as mentioned above.
Plague 9: Darkness (Exodus 10:21–29) could be directed to Ra, Horus,¹⁹ Nut, and Hathor; deities of the sun and sky.
Plague 10: Death of the firstborn (Exodus 11) could be directed to Min,²⁰ Heqet, Isis, Anubis,²¹ and Osiris; deities of reproduction, childbirth, protection of children, death, and the afterlife, respectively.²² No other acclaimed deity, spiritual being, human or animal can do what the one called El Shaddai can do. And the Exodus shows that.
““Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5). This is the first and greatest command, reiterated in the new covenant by Jesus, “Jesus answered, “The most important is Listen, Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:29–30). This is the pinnacle, as all the other commands flow through this one. If this one command is not obeyed and not set first, nothing else can follow. Not just for worship and life, but love. Without having and knowing true agape love, you cannot rightly love other people as all other love is a selfish love, but agape is selfless love. The historian Josephus even wrote in the first century that this first command is the crux, commenting “The first command teaches us that there is but one God and that we ought to worship him only,” listing out the rest of the commands considering this. The natural order of things flows from this as creation, specifically humans, were created and hardwired to worship and love. Humans will worship something, even atheism worships. Because God is love (1 John 4:8) He bestows this command to us (who are made in His image) that we also love, agape love, the way He does. And this agape love can only come from the one who is pure agape love, the creator of all things, who came down here to live as a lonely human and was tortured for the crime of not obeying this initial command among all other crimes that humanity has committed. Knowing this, warrants a question. If He did that, if He lived for others, why shouldn’t we come to know Him and live for others just as He did?
These laws are prefaced, as mentioned above, with God’s act of deliverance. Since God begins in this way, and since God chose the Israelites before they were even a nation with their father Abraham, the commandments are not a set of rules to follow if one wants to be chosen and saved by God; rather they are the proper response to already being chosen. The people were already chosen by Him, and now He is telling them the proper response they should have toward Him.²³ As Christians, who are chosen by God “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” (Ephesians 1:3–4) our response toward Him for being chosen should be the same. All ten commands, minus one, are repeated in the New Testament and will be discussed later.
Footnotes
¹ John H. Walton “Ancient Laws, Scripture and Modern Issues.” In NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, 147. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016.
² Paul J Achtemeier et al., The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1985; repr., San Francisco, Ca: Harpersanfrancisco, 1996), 597.
³ Andrea D Saner, “Too Much to Grasp” (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 123–29.
⁴ Francis Brown, S R Driver, and Charles A Briggs, The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, 20th ed. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2021), 818.
⁵ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/23/polyamory-new-way-to-love-men-women-sex-relationships-elf-lyons)
⁶ Gary Edward Schnittjer, The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006), 223.
⁷ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapi_(Nile_god)
⁸ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis
⁹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khnum
¹⁰ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heqet
¹¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(deity)
https://mysteryinhistory.com/uatchit/
¹³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor
¹⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_(deity)
¹⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekhmet
¹⁶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(goddess)
¹⁷ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris
¹⁸ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(deity)
¹⁹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus
²⁰ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_(god)
²¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anubis
²² Gary Edward Schnittjer, The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006), 223.
²³ T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker, “Decalogue,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 175.
