October 2, 2011

Proper 22 – Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

How oddly this text is cut up for consumption.  What reason could there be for serving Scripture in this way?  Are the Ten Commandments too much for a single sitting?  And what of the material that has been removed?  Is it merely excess fat?

If, as seems the general rule, the Bible deals in units of three (three days/nights’ walk), seven (seven pairs of clean animals, seven days in the week), and forty (forty days/years in the wilderness), why would the commandments be packaged as a ten?  Is this so that our ten fingers will serve as a constant reminder?  If so, have those responsible for the lectionary lopped of a digit?  A quick scan through the remaining verses indicates (thankfully) no – all commandments (by all reckonings – more of that later) are still present and correct.

This is not the first time the commandments have been edited.  The competing collections in Exodus 34 and Deuteronomy 5 indicate that if there was ever an original ‘ten’ then it has been variously treated in the different Old Testament traditions:  Exodus 34, to include instructions for festivals; and Deuteronomy 5, to link the Sabbath with God’s acts in history (particularly the exodus).  Exodus 20 is the most prestigious collection of the three: it is given pride of place in the narrative – Israel’s arrival at Sinai (Exodus 19) – where it marks the culmination of the escape from Egypt.  But this too has undergone adaption and expansion.  So much so, in fact, that it is not always clear where one commandment ends and another begins, or even if there are indeed ten of them.  The Talmud, for example, counts Exodus 20:2 as the first commandment, with verses 3-6 counting as the second.  The Anglican and Reformed traditions count verse 2 as a mere preface to the commandments proper, separating verse 3 from verse 4 to make up the ten.  Roman Catholics and Lutherans treat verses 2-6 as a single extended commandment, and so separate the coveting of wives from the coveting of houses, fields, donkeys, or slaves to get the right result.

That wives feature as items not to be coveted at all indicates that, whatever claims might be made for the universality of the commandments, they do in fact represent a point of view that is both particular and historical – one that has the property owning male in mind.  Indeed, the commandments seem little concerned with the lives and contexts of women as such, only in their existence as part of a household.  And given that both verse 10 (cut from the lectionary reading) and verse 17 address slave owners rather than slaves, they seem little concerned with the plight of these runaways either.  In short, they anticipate a time when Israel has acquired both property and social structures much like those of its neighbors.

In this respect, the Ten Commandments blaze no trail.  They make no effort to establish equity between the sexes; offer no models for an egalitarian economics.  In short, they conform to the hierarchies—patriarchies—common enough in the ancient Middle East.  Indeed, as scholarship has shown, even their form is typical of the time – albeit with one twist.  Whereas ancient Middle Eastern law – the Code of Hammurabi, say – claims to be divinely inspired but humanly drafted, the biblical commandments posit the deity as draftsman also.  Not only does this situate God as Israel’s king and lawgiver, it also transforms obedience to the law – whether sacred or civil – into an act of religious devotion.  But in keeping with Middle Eastern patterns, where patrons must prove their fitness for the task, Israel’s patron must first establish his credentials before setting out the terms of the contract.  God does this with a summary of the exodus story so far: ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (20:2), which while demonstrating that the LORD is indeed a worthy protector for Israel, also makes it clear that Israel as a theological entity, is founded solely upon divine initiative – an act of divine grace – rather than the law.

The following commandment – the first according to several reckonings – protects the exclusivity of this arrangement: ‘you shall have no other gods before me’ (20:3).  Not that this does not actually deny the existence of other gods (the contrary, in fact), only their claim upon the LORD’s people.  As at least one scholar has suggested, this makes it less like a command than a declaration of spiritual emancipation.  Israel is now free to serve its Deity without distraction.  But one might then ask who is to benefit most from this kind of emancipation?  Given that the next verse prohibiting the making of an ‘image’, it could be argued that the Deity has done rather well for himself in securing a people while refusing to be beholden to its gaze.  That said, and skipping over his claims about having a jealous and extravagant nature (which has also been cut from the lectionary), the ban on using the divine name to endorse human enterprises which follows (20:7), hints that freedom from representation might also, in fact, serve as a safeguard against coercive uses of the idea of God.

The command to ‘remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy’ (v.8) could also be said to halt this kind of exploitation.  It is one of only two positive commands – a form that institutes habits and practices (as opposed to the negative commands that simply single out habits and practices to avoid).  In this instance, the habit and practice entails the weekly cessation from all work: ‘Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.  You shall not do any work’ (vv. 9-10).  Given that it does not propose worship as a replacement for activity, the commandment would seem also to give the Deity a break from the labor of listening to liturgies – although other texts do regard acts of worship as an appropriate use of the time: see, for example, Leviticus 24:8.  But certainly the idea that God rests – the particular reason given for Israel’s Sabbath (v. 11) – indicates that he is not at the beck and call of his creation.  Thus, together with the ban on images, the Sabbath further interrupts domestication of the Deity: it is a holy day – a day set apart to remind Israel of the separateness, the holiness of God.  The Sabbath also resists the exploitation of men (both the addressees and their male slaves) and women (again listed as part of a household) – although with verse 10 also cut from the lectionary, such details as these might be missed.  This is less explicit in Exodus 20, where the Sabbath is modeled on God’s rest in creation alone, than in Deuteronomy 5, where the weekly cessation from labor is said to memorialize the once for all cessation of Israel’s drudgery in Egypt.  On these terms, the Sabbath offers an ongoing exodus-of-sorts in which God’s once-proven purposes are kept ever present.

The Sabbath thus combines interest in the holiness (otherness) of God with that in the holiness (separateness) of the Chosen People.  As such it is perfectly positioned as a bridge between commandments concerning the former and those concerning the latter.  The first of these is the second of the two positive commands and the only one that offers any kind of consequence or outcome: ‘honor your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you’ (v. 12).  In effect, the commandment transforms a matter of etiquette into a matter of national consequence.  Honoring parents becomes an earthly counterpart to honoring God.

In their brevity, the next three commandments – ‘You shall not murder.  You shall not commit adultery.  You shall not steal’ (vv. 13-15) –give a sense of what all ten must once have been like.  There may be a lack of explication within the biblical text itself, but there is no lack of ongoing commentary elsewhere; commentary typically aimed at widening the application of each.  The command against murder, for example – which may well have started out as a halt to the cycles of vengeance killings (see Numbers 35:27-30) – has been read alongside Genesis 9:6 as an affirmation of life in general; the command against adultery, which would once have preserved the claims of men over their women – but not the reverse – has been cited as support for mutual monogamy and respect; and the command against stealing, if once a condemnation of kidnapping (the same verb appears in Exodus 21:16), and then of all forms of theft, has since been taken as a protection of all the rights of the individual.

With ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor’ (v. 16) actually specifying misrepresentation in court (rather than lying in general, that is), a pattern emerges making this the fourth in a series of commandments in which each in turn represents a broadening of the scope: the first protects the individual (from murder), the second the family (from adultery), the third the estate (from theft), and this, the wider community (from skewed legal proceedings).  In effect, these collectively set boundaries that ensure the integrity of a society and its individuals – much as the first commandments set boundaries protecting the integrity of the concept of God.  But then if the commandment against coveting in verse 17 is to be read as an attempt to regulate thoughts and intentions, it is startlingly out-of-keeping with the rest.  But as its counterpart in the Exodus 34 edition indicates, it is perhaps best read as an attempt to put an end to excessive greed.  As such, it is both a complement to the previous three commandments, and by releasing Israel from all desires other than God, a continuation of the theme laid out in the commandments before that.

Thus we come to the end of the celebrated Ten Commandments, which are perhaps less a foundation of all moral codes and legal systems than a set of stipulations simultaneously binding and separating people and God.  A final scene (verses 18-20), continues this paradoxical remit by returning the audience’s attention to the smoke, wind, and fire encountered earlier in Exodus 19.  This places the reception of the commandments in the context of theophany – the pyrotechnical announcement of the divine presence.  The reader is therefore left in no doubt about the divine origins of the stipulations, just as the Israelites at Mount Sinai are left in no doubt about the otherness of their God.  In fact, so dramatically are the divine boundaries enforced, that all hope of either intimacy or immediacy fast drains away: ‘You speak to us, and we will listen,’ they say to Moses, ‘but do not let God speak to us, or we will die’ (v. 19).  Moses’ reply – the end point of the reading – is not finally very helpful: ‘Do not be afraid’ may be a common enough biblical reassurance, often indicating that some battle is already won, but that ‘God has come only to test you’ is somewhat obscure and obscuring – what kind of testing has God now in mind?  And that this is to ‘put the fear of him upon you’ is a flat-out negation of Moses’ initial reassuring tone in verse 20.  In all, a contract has been drafted to generate kinship between a wholly other God who is at the same time fearsome and protective, and a people graciously chosen but now to be tested for their worth; between a Deity who is always to remain unseen, and a people who are ever under his watchful eye.  Amen.