The Ten Commandments

I've been reading, with great interest, a series of comments by David Plotz (the Jewish deputy editor of Slate.com) on his reading of the Torah. With the "Blogging the Bible" project, he's attempting to go chapter-by-chapter, carefully considering the text and offering his own impressions of it as someone who has never otherwise given a great amount of thought to it. The results are frequently fascinating, as is demonstrated by an observation he had today.

We're all well acquainted with the traditional Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, as recorded in Exodus 20:1-17: 1) You shall have no other gods before me; 2) Make no graven idols; 3) Don't misuse the Lord's name; 4) Remember the Sabbath; 5) Honor your father and mother; 6) Do not murder; 7) Do not commit adultery; 8) Do not steal; 9) Do not give false testimony; and 10) Do not covet. We have this enduring image of Moses carrying these ten basic laws to the Israelites on the stone tablets given to him by God. But is that image correct??

God said, in Exodus 24:12, that he would give Moses "the tablets of stone, with the laws and commands I have written for their instruction." He did not say that those laws and commands included the Big Ten. After God actually hands over the tablets in Exodus 31:18, Moses destroys them at the foot of Mount Sinai (Exodus 32:19) because of Israel's faithless veneration of the Golden Calf created by Aaron. In Exodus 34, God promises to re-create the original tablets, but read the chapter for yourself and see what God actually conveyed to Moses...

Exodus 34
The New Stone Tablets
1 The LORD said to Moses, "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 2 Be ready in the morning, and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. 3 No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain."
4 So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. 5 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation."

8 Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. 9 "O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes," he said, "then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance."

10 Then the LORD said: "I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles. [a] 14 [1] Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

15 "[2] Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

17 "[3] Do not make cast idols.

18 "[4] Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt.

19 "The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.
"[5] No one is to appear before me empty-handed.

21 "[6]Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

22 "[7] Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. [b] 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God.

25 "[8] Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.

26 "[9] Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
"[10] Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk."

27 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." 28 Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Plotz pointed out in today's post that, while it does include the familiar commandments concerning other gods, graven images, and the Sabbath, this set of ten commandments is radically different from the one with which we're so familiar. But the text seems strongly to suggest that this second set is the one by which God intended to establish the covenant with Israel. What do you think about this? What could it mean? How does it affect the way that you think about the traditional Ten Commandments?

[[Addendum 6/29/06 - I looked in my copy of the Oxford Bible Commentary for some additional insight into Chapter 34. The commentary notes that these provisions are drawn from the "Book of the Covenant" which is elaborated in Exodus 20:22-23:33, following the original Ten Commandments , with expansion of some of the ideas. According to the Commentary's author, this shorter list implies that the initial terms laid out in the earlier passages are not void, it is just unnecessary for the author of Exodus to rehash the entire list of laws and commands. As for the question of what, precisely, was written, the Commentary says, "Up to this point the implication has been that it would be the words in vv. 11-26, yet the text adds that it was 'the ten commandments'. This can only mean 20:2-17. The likely explanation is that someone has added the words 'the ten commandments', remembering that in Deuteronomy 5 it is these which are written on the tablets and trying to make Exodus and Deuteronomy agree."

I am normally quite persuaded by what the Commentary has to offer in explaining passages, but for some reason this one seems shallow. Reading the text of Exodus 34:27, it seems very plain to me that God is referring to the words just spoken. They were preceeded with the statement, "I am making a covenant with you," and bookended with, "in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." The Commentary fails to even discuss this point and offers no explanation why the immediate reference to "the ten commandments" "can only mean 20:2-17." Later readers have certainly inferred that it means 20:2-17, but I don't think it's at all clear, particularly given the unambiguous language of chapter 34, that the author was referencing anything other than the commands God gave in this section. What are your thoughts on this?]]

Allow Me To Present...

the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. If you can stomach more than two minutes of Olympic champion Carl Lewis' "music" video, you'll get to see him (apparently) hooking up with a 70-year-old woman in a steam room. And no, I'm not kidding.

Hope

Hope: Desire accompanied by an expectation of or a belief in fulfillment.

I've been thinking a lot about Hope these days.

In many ways, this particular virtue is one that I have excised from my own religious life. Several years ago I came to the conclusion that if I was truly going to trust in God, to believe that He would guide me on the pathways that would ultimately be best and most useful, I should choose not to ask God for my own desires. I came to this conclusion based on a handful of ideas: 1) God already knows the things that we want, 2) God also knows what would be best for us, and 3) sometimes God grants us our desires, even knowing that they would not be best for us. By choosing not to ask for what I want, I reasoned, I am truly demonstrating trust that God will not lead me wrong. If I don't get what I want, that just means that God could best use me in different circumstances. So in my prayers, my request is for God to give me peace, patience, wisdom, and strength to deal properly with the circumstances in which I find myself. The end result was that I just don't develop Hope in a religious context, because I don't allow myself to have that expectation or belief that my desires will be fulfilled.

My paradigm is being seriously challenged. In the past three weeks, a conviction has been laid on my heart -- a conviction that I believe has come from God -- and I find myself filled with both an overwhelming desire for one particular outcome and the expectation that God will bring it to fruition. But even as that Hope has arisen, I'm presented with a predicament, because while I truly do believe that the conviction itself is from God, the path to that outcome is difficult and unclear and, despite my firm belief that this is the direction in which I'm called to go, there remains the possibility that I'm somehow misinterpreting God's guidance.

For once, however, I find myself feeling that even if this conviction is not really something that God has laid on my heart, I'm not willing to just abandon my desire. Where normally I would not have let myself really invest in what I wanted, here I have. And knowing that God does sometimes grant our desires even when He's not the one driving them, I really, really want to pray for this all to work out. But how can I do that while still remaining true to my commitment to trust simply in God?

Love Languages

Over the past few days I've been reading The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. In the book, he proposes that there are five primary avenues through which people give and receive love: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. His theory is that many couples struggle to make each other feel loved because they are wired to give/receive love differently than their partner.

Toward the end of the book, Chapman encourages the reader to list, in order of importance to them, the ways that they experience the love that someone else is offering them. After thinking about it, I think I'd rank them as follows:

1) Physical Touch - While there are times that I can be stand-offish, I'm usually a touchy-feely kind of person. I really love being able to be in close physical proximity to someone that I care about.

2) Acts of Service - This one is kind of ironic, because on one level I like to be totally self-sufficient. But on another level, it totally meant the world to me when Jen took care of me when I was sick, even when I was acting grumpy about it. A few weeks ago when I was being a complete butthole towards her, I felt awful and ended up staying home from work. She offered to come check on me and bring me food and medicine. I'm not proud of my response (just like I'm not proud of much of anything about how poorly I acted for so long), but I told her not to bother because I just wanted to be left alone. At the same time, nothing could have more clearly told me what a truly good friend she wanted to be for me. I hated myself for telling her to stay away.

3) Words of Affirmation - This one is also a weird one. I usually have a very positive self-image (perhaps overly positive...), so that the last thing that I would want or need is for someone to throw more fuel on that fire. Flattery will get you nowhere with me. At the same time, I love to be encouraged - particularly when someone confirms that I was successful in an effort to make them happy with something I did. So if someone offers me honest words of encouragement, it can mean the world to me.

4) Quality Time - Again, my overdeveloped sense of self-sufficiency cuts into the usefulness of this language for me. I can spend long periods of time away from those I care about, even without talking to them on the phone or anything, and not feel like anything is missing in our relationship. And even when spending time together, I struggle to not multi-task. I wonder if my assessment of this language is a little skewed, however, because since I let down those walls a couple of weeks ago I'm finding a renewed appreciation for Quality Time.

5) Receiving Gifts - If you know me, you probably saw this coming a mile away. I have to admit that Carl was right a couple of weeks ago when he said that even I liked getting gifts every once in a while. There have absolutely been times when I have gotten a gift that made me very happy because it demonstrated that someone really understood me, what I like, what is important to me. I hate to single just one out, so I hope that nobody feels like I forgot/didn't appreciate their gifts, but last year for my birthday (you know, when I first announced that I'd rather not receive gifts) my sister, Rebekah, sent me a gift that she'd purchased before my decree: a Homestead Grays baseball cap to match the Grays jersey I'd recently bought. It was a fantastic gift because it showed that she had really paid attention to something (the jersey) I said I was excited about and had put a lot of thought and effort into choosing something that would complement that. I was very, very impressed and I really felt loved as a result of that gift.

So that's my list. What do you think is your primary love language?

Amazing Article

I've always been a fan of Tony Dungy, the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts. Ever since he was coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, I've thought that he exuded knowledge, class, and a connection with his players that went well beyond football. Last winter, in the midst of an absolutely incredible season, Coach Dungy's oldest son committed suicide. An article posted today on ESPN.com offers an in-depth look at how Coach Dungy has relied on his faith in God to get through the unbelievable pain of that loss. It is the most impressive discussion of the power of God to comfort and heal that I have ever seen in a major secular publication. I highly recommend it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/feature/featureVideo?page=amazinggrace

Jen

If the past few months have revealed anything about me, it is the fact that I am a flawed person. Particularly in regard to a couple of the relationships that are dearest to me, I've been unbelievably selfish, short-sighted, presumptuous, and condescending. These things, amplified by pride and stubbornness, have caused me to inflict numerous injuries on others even as I was completely (and perhaps willfully) blind to the havoc I was causing. I am terribly, terribly sorry for this, and I want to do everything I can to bring healing where I have been causing harm.

In particular, I need to apologize to Jen. For seven months she patiently tried to persuade me to work with her as a partner in our relationship. But I don't like to rely on other people - even when they only want to help. So I consistently refused to think of the two of us as a team. I insisted that I would be my own man, regardless. And worst of all, I threw up barriers around my heart in order to keep her at arm's length, fending her off no matter how hard she tried to love me. That finally led to me breaking up with her about a month ago, because I would not let myself love her and I had convinced myself it was really "for her own good."

I held on to that conviction for a long time. I pray that it wasn't for too long.

Last week, all of my carefully maintained defenses crumbled around me. It became apparent to me, with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, how wrong I have been, how poorly I've acted, and how horribly I've hurt her. And in the sorrow and remorse that I felt in the wake of that epiphany, something entirely new dawned within me. My heart opened up in a way that I'd previously been so careful to prevent, and I realized that I love her.

I love her for the strong, amazing, beautiful woman that she is. I love her for her passionate commitment to God and the way that it compels her selflessly to serve others. I love her for her fantastic sense of humor and her keen inteligence. I love her for the fun that we have always have together and for how she blends so seamlessly with my friends and family. I love talking to her, learning from her, and worshipping with her. And I love her for putting up with me so long, even when I was doing everything I could to push her away.

The irony, of course, is that this realization comes after I've made so many horrific mistakes. I fear that I've made so many that Jen may not be willing to give me another chance to prove that I can be the man that she always knew I could be. It will take an awful lot of work to overcome the damage that I've already done, but it is a task to which I'm committed, heart and soul.

The Difficult Kind
by Sheryl Crow

I think I was wrong
I think you were right
All my angry words
Will keep me up at night

Through the old screen door
I still hear you say
"Honey, won't you stop
Treating me that way."

If you could only see
What love has made of me
Then I'd no longer be in your mind
The difficult kind
'Cause babe I've changed

Tell it to me slow
Tell me with your eyes
If anyone should know
How to let it slide

I swear I can see you
Coming up the drive
There ain't nothing like regret
To remind you you're alive

If you could only see
What love has made of me
Then I'd no longer be in your mind
The difficult kind
'Cause babe I've changed

I crossed the canyon a thousand times
But never noticed what was mine
What youll remember of me tonight
Well, it almost makes me cry
Yeah, it almost makes me cry

Oh ballbreaking moon and ridiculing stars
The older I get, the closer you are
Don't you have somewhere that you need to be
Instead of hanging here making a fool of me

If you could only see
What love has made of me
Then I'd no longer be in your mind
The difficult kind
But you won't see the change in me

If you could only see
What love has made of me
But I'll forever be in your mind
The difficult kind
But you won't see, no you wont see
The good in me
But babe I've changed
Cause babe I've changed