CHAPTER 1
The First Commandment
I, YHWH, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery; there must not be for you other gods over against my face. (Exod. 20:2-3 and Deut. 5:6-7)
The Central Importance of Verse 1
There is something very telling and crucially important in the Jewish tradition's notion that the first commandment is in fact only the first part of the sentence translated above. And at the same time that decision is, at least on the surface, a curious one. Exodus 20:2 and Deuteronomy 5:6, absolutely identical in language, are not "commands" at all. They are announcements, basic convictions about the nature of YHWH, central claims about just who YHWH is for Israel. If you want to understand this God, you remember what this God has done for you, and you anticipate that this God will act in similar ways for you now and in the future. It is crucial for a full comprehension of the Ten Commandments to be clear about the power and significance of this first claim.
This first verse of the two lists of the Ten Commandments ensures that the Ten ought never to be heard as "merely" legislation for Israel or for us. When we examine the Ten Commandments, we are not looking at "law" in a simple sense. Whatever "dos" and "don'ts" the Ten announce, they are nuanced by and filtered through the proclamation of the first verse; unless and until I know and affirm that YHWH is the God who brought me out of bondage, the remainder of the Ten are reduced to a sterile list of activities I may or may not choose to take seriously. But if I recognize and celebrate the God who is for me, who acts in my behalf, that God's demands become a central part of God's call on my life. In other words, the demands of "law," as always in the Bible, necessarily follow the gift of God, and I must keep gift and demand together if I am to take the Ten with appropriate seriousness.
It is for this reason that Genesis 1 is Genesis 1. The Bible's story begins not with demands nor with proof but with pure announcement, straightforward proclamation. "In beginning, God created sky and earth." The text does not stop here for discussion. No invitation is offered for someone to suggest a different view of things; there is no opportunity for a counterproposal. The reality of God's creative activity is merely announced and presumably sung by those who would enter into a community of those who would sing the same tune. Andrew Greeley says: "The fundamental insight of Israel is that God is involved. He is committed; he cares for his people ... he cares passionately for them." For Greeley such a view of God represents a "fundamental shift in world view" both individually and collectively.
Those of us who participate regularly in Christian worship can well appreciate this basic claim. Each Sunday, usually after the offering of our gifts to God, we sing some setting of the ancient doxology: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise God all creatures here below; praise God above, ye heavenly hosts; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." In this song we join our community in announcing a worldview, one that flies in the face of several competing views, well known and embraced by many. If all blessings flow from God, then they do not flow from IBM or Coca-Cola or Viagra or Republicans or Democrats or pastors or husbands or wives. In the same way that the doxologies of our worship services and the first chapter of the book of Genesis function to ground all that follows in the gifts of God, so the first verse of the Ten Commandments focuses all subsequent demands through God's gifted lens.
It is, thus, not only the New Testament that teaches us about God's gift of grace. At the very start of what has long been known as the ultimate legislation of Israel, the traditionists who preserved the ancient code for us were careful to preface that code with the basic portrait of a God who loves and acts on their and our behalf. Any sermon on the Ten Commandments should announce loudly and clearly that the God who commands is first the God who loves and who acts for us. Deuteronomy makes this fact especially certain in a famous verse that follows the list of the Ten.
If Judaism has a credal confession, surely it is found at Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: YHWH is our God, YHWH alone. You shall love YHWH with all your heart (i.e., your will and intelligence), and with all your life (i.e., your basic life force, all that you most centrally are), and with all your strength (i.e., your physical power)." This command to love God is said to be (6:1) "the commandment," a summary of all the commandments just enumerated. In response to the loving gift of freedom, bestowed by YHWH in the escape from Egypt (Deut. 5:6), Israel is to love God with heart, life, and strength. The Ten Commandments, along with all subsequent legislation, are merely commentary on this basic commandment to respond to God with the love God has shown first.
Exegesis of the First Commandment
Though the translation of the first commandment seems simple enough, there are several places that deserve some commentary.
1
The first three words of the opening command could be translated in at least two ways. My reading, "I, YHWH, am your God" attempts to capture the slightly unusual word order of the Hebrew. The pronoun "I" occurs first in the sentence (the verb nearly always precedes the noun in Hebrew word order), and because that is so the emphasis of the sentence falls squarely on the identity of YHWH as Israel's God. The implication of the word order is that no other god can possibly be Israel's God, an implication that is made plain in the second part of the command. The more traditional reading of the words: "I am [YHWH], your God," (NRSV) while accurate, does not place a powerful enough emphasis on the central fact that YHWH and no other is the God who has acted in Egypt for Israel.
2
The second person pronouns of the commandment are all singular. This is so even though the literary contexts of both lists are plainly corporate ones. In Exodus God is ostensibly speaking to Moses, but in the verse that precedes God's speaking of the commandments, Moses has gone down the mountain, at God's request, to speak to the people (Exod. 19:25). And at the end of the list, the people are described as terrified and trembling in the face of the thunder and lightning, the blast of a trumpet, and the smoking mountain. They urge Moses to speak to them, but refuse to listen to God speaking, fearing death if they do (Exod. 20:18-21). Thus, the Exodus scene is one where Moses hears the Ten Commandments from God but is to convey them to the fearful ears of the people. The "you" of Exodus, though grammatically singular, is plainly plural in purpose, intended for the whole people.
And so it is in Deuteronomy. Moses himself speaks the list of Ten directly to the assembled people (Deut. 5:1-21), but he too uses the singular second person, even though he is speaking to the whole community of Israel. But, of course, in the unique style of Deuteronomy, Moses is speaking to far more people than those supposedly gathered at Jordan on the verge of the land of promise. "Not with our ancestors did YHWH make this covenant, but with us, we, those here today, all of us today" (Deut. 5:3). I translate very literally to make the point of the text. The author of Deuteronomy intends to make the commandments about to be given as contemporary as possible; they may have been given to the people through Moses long before the age of Deuteronomy's community, but they were given to that community just as surely as they were to the community of Moses. Thus, even though the singular is used, the intended plural includes all in every age who hear the commands and confirm their willingness to live in a community formed by them.
The author of Deuteronomy teaches the modern preacher a valuable lesson: this ancient legislation is to be appropriated as something more than a history lesson. All, in every place and time, who hear and affirm the God who loves the people and wills freedom for them from every bond of slavery, can become part of the everlasting covenant of that God, a covenant that forms a community of love and justice. It is that God who spoke and who speaks the Ten Commandments.
3
"Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."
The use of this verb "go out/bring out" (yatsa) in connection with the events of Egyptian bondage and freedom that stand at the center of Israel's life and faith is broad and deep in the Hebrew Bible. In over 130 instances, this formula in various forms occurs. It is found in thirty of the thirty-nine books of the older testament. Perhaps most impressively, ninety-one times we are told that "YHWH brought Israel out of Egypt." It is impossible to overestimate the significance of this affirmation for Israel's ongoing tradition.
It is thus crucial and fully appropriate that the formula should appear at the head of both lists of Israel's most memorable legislation. As noted above, no sermon on the Ten can be preached without careful attention to the theological significance of this formula as a proclamation of the nature of the God who commands.
4
"There must not be for you other gods."
Once again, several translations are possible for this phrase. One could read: "You must not possess other gods," since the Hebrew presents one of the ways that possession is expressed. An intriguing possibility is the translation, "You must not become other gods," possible because the Hebrew also presents one of the ways to express "becoming." I will return to this latter possibility in some comments below. The most straightforward implication, however, seems to be that if one affirms the YHWH who brought Israel (and us) out of Egypt, one would be no less than a fool to turn to other gods.
Yet turn to other gods Israel did, and with a regularity that is both mind-boggling and disheartening. There is little evidence at any time in the historical life of Israel that they maintained a single-minded and pure worship of this sovereign God. The names of other gods changed from Baal to El to Astarte to Tammuz to the Queen of Heaven, but another god by any other name is nonetheless not YHWH. This one who in the first commandment commands absolute loyalty received nothing of the kind from the chosen people.
Two points should be noted about this lack of loyalty. First, the command to possess no other gods implies that there are other gods to be chosen. The people of Israel did not burst from the shackles of Egypt into a pure monotheism—far from it. Their movement toward the belief in the one God, YHWH, was a long and arduous one. Every other culture of the Middle East worshiped a dizzying array of gods, goddesses, and godlets, and we would expect Israel to do likewise, at least early in their lives in the land of promise. The stories of Genesis refer to various tribal deities—the Fear of Isaac, the Shield of Jacob, for example—that surely were localized divinities. Sacred pillars and poles and other objects of stone and wood are mentioned in every section of the Hebrew Bible, from Gideon's snaring ephod (Judg. 8:27) to Laban's teraphim (Gen. 31:30-35) to Ezekiel's horror at the worship of Tammuz, a foreign fertility deity, in the heart of the great Temple of Jerusalem itself (Ezek. 8). The command to avoid other gods had genuine significance in every age of Israel's life.
The second point to be made is that the issue of idolatry is never a simple one. It is not merely a question of foolishly worshiping a block of wood as opposed to the living God. Second Isaiah has great good fun skewering such idiocies (e.g., Isa. 44:9-20). But merely choosing something or someone other than the great God of Exodus to revere is not the real problem. The more important problem is found in the results of such worship. What sort of person does the worship of other gods create? How does the activity of a person reveal just who or what that person worships? These questions lead us back to the first commandment. Right worship of the God who brought us out of the land of Egypt will lead us to listen to and affirm the nine commandments that are to follow. And living by those commandments will be the surest way to know whether YHWH is the one being worshiped. Again we see the union of gift and demand; God's activity for us leads to our response to the demands that God makes on us.
I noted above that a possible translation of this clause is: "You must not become other gods." This translation is reminiscent of the famous promise of the snake in the garden of Eden. He said to the woman that with her eating of the tree of knowledge she (and her man—the snake's verb is plural) will "become like gods" (or "like God"—the word is elohim as it is in the Ten Commandments). If the preposition that precedes the word elohim is read asseveratively, one might translate, "You will certainly become God!" With this reading, the phrase in Exodus and Deuteronomy would become, "You must not become another god over against me!"
The force of the story in the garden (Gen. 3) revolves around the desire and the willingness of the first couple to eat of the fruit in order to become either like God or precisely to become God. The hilarious result of their supposed ascent to divinity is their sewing of fig leaf aprons to cover their nakedness. Every Israelite hearing that, along with every person who lives in the warmer climates of the southern parts of the United States, would immediately burst out laughing. They know what fig leaves feel like. Perhaps No. 2 grade sandpaper might be a good analogy! One can only imagine how briefly the naked pair might be able actually to wear fig leaves next to the more tender places of their nakedness. Becoming God is in this wonderful tale far less than it is cracked up to be.
Whichever way one chooses to hear the phrase—to possess other gods or to become another god—the warning is clear. YHWH will brook no rival in the universe, because YHWH is the God, and no other, who brought Israel out of Egypt. And thus YHWH is the God who brings you and me out of our slavery, out of the houses of our bondage. No other god, and least of all those of us who think we can be our own gods, have the ability to so act for ourselves or for others.
5
"Over against my face."
My translation of the last two Hebrew words is rather awkward, because the words themselves are a bit awkward. The preposition, here translated "over against" (al in Hebrew), most often expresses motion or rest on or above something. Phrases like "over the earth" (Gen. 1:20) and "beside the wall" (1 Kings 6:5) are common examples. By extension, the preposition can be read adversatively: "to fight against" (Deut. 20:10) is an example. Thus, the first commandment says that to revere other gods is literally "to fly in the face of" YHWH, to go "against" the One who brought us out of Egypt.
Perhaps the most telling parallel use is found in Genesis 48:7. There Jacob describes the death of his beloved Rachel by saying "Rachel died to my sorrow" (literally "against me"). Jacob says that Rachel's death diminished him and brought to him pain and sadness. This use adds an important dimension to the preposition's appearance in the first commandment. YHWH's emotion when other gods are chosen is not only a demanding anger; there is also a sense of diminishment, a frustrating sorrow and loss. Like Jacob, YHWH is less without the chosen ones whom YHWH brought out of bondage.
The euphemism "my face" (panai), meaning "me," adds to the very personal tone of the command. Of course, the Hebrews do in other places use the noun "face" as a picturesque way of expressing the first-person pronoun (see the Pss. 42:11 and 43:5 for examples). "The face of YHWH" is also a very common way to speak of the near presence of YHWH, and, as is well known, "to see YHWH's face" is an experience never to be had by any human. Even the great Moses is denied that vision (Exod. 33:23). The face of God may be seen in others, however, as Jacob's meeting with his brother Esau makes clear, if not to Jacob then certainly to us (Gen. 33:10). In short, when the commandment warns against choosing other gods over against YHWH's face, included in the warning is the long history of Israel's unique and special relationship to the divine face and all that the face entails. To choose other gods is to reject YHWH, most especially YHWH's face, the "face" that the ancient prayer of the book of Numbers so pleadingly called for (Num. 6:24-26).
One more arresting insight may be gained from the ancient translations of these last two words of the commandment. The Septuagint, the third to second century B.C.E. Greek translation of the Hebrew text, along with several other early translations, read the words: "only me" (plen emou in Greek). The emphasis of this near-paraphrase is YHWH's zealous uniqueness: "You must not take for yourselves strange gods, only me" reads the Septuagint of Exodus 20:3. This reading ties the first commandment rather more directly to the second commandment's prohibition against images, the chief rationale for which is YHWH's zealotry against anything or anybody who dared to challenge the unchallengeable God.
Sermonic Notes on the First Commandment
The first commandment creates a rich and complex theological world. It could be said that it presents nothing less than a summary of the Bible's most basic claims about God.
