Commandments on the Rocks
Remarks on the Ten Commandments, Law, and Morality
If moral values are so important, then we ought to try to figure out what they are, or at least what they are not. Everyone has “values,” but not the same ones. The variety of conflicting opinions about what is right and good raises the (sometimes rhetorical) question: “Who is to say which values are the right ones?” It takes more gumption than most moralists have to stand up and announce: “I and those who agree with me are the ones to say,” but that appears to be what most moralists believe. They think that, as luck would have it, the very values they happen to embrace are the right ones.
But what makes some values the right ones? Where do they come from? Do they depend on nature, or a social contract, or are they something we invent? The answer that is now being heard with increasing frequency is that our moral rules and our legal laws derive their legitimacy and authority from the ruler and creator of the universe, God. The rules for proper conduct are set out in the Bible, and the essentials are presented in the Ten Commandments. It is to symbolize the importance of the Bible as the divine basis of morality and law that the commandments, inscribed in stone, or framed and hung on the wall, have traditionally been displayed in schools and government buildings.
In 2002, a controversy over the public display of the Ten Commandments did not end with the removal of the slab installed in the lobby of the Alabama Judicial Building by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, nor with the removal of the judge himself. Other monuments and displays can be found in schools and public buildings around the country, and many of them are now being targeted in the name of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has just allowed one such monument to remain on the Capitol grounds in Austin, Texas (Van Orden v. Perry); but in a separate case the Court required the removal of two framed copies of the commandments from county courthouses in Kentucky (McCreary County, Ky. v. ACLU of Kentucky).[1]
Though Justice Moore was at the time accused of having political motivations, the protestors who gathered on the courthouse steps seemed genuinely troubled by the disappearance of the monument honoring the laws on which, they presumed, our laws are based. That presumption, however, is so questionable that one is led wonder whether those supporting the monument with such passion have thought carefully enough about what is inscribed on it. Thinking carefully about the Ten Commandments begins with a critical look at what they actually say. My rule of interpretation will be to take them as literally as possible. ‘Steal’ means steal, not borrow from your neighbor and forget to return. If one of them had said “Thou shalt not use salt,” that wouldn’t just mean on our corn, and it wouldn’t mean that we are forbidden to use soy sauce, or that life must be made as uninteresting as possible. ‘Salt’ means salt.
If we can suspend the presumption that these rules have a sacred immunity to discussion or criticism, we may be surprised to find that, as a set of directives, they leave much to be desired. Not only is it unclear to whom they are addressed, they are couched in language that is often vague and occasionally incoherent. They demand that we do things that are either pointless or beyond our capacity, and when they forbid things we would all forbid they leave it to us to decide how they should be qualified and interpreted.
1. The First Commandment
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousandth generation of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.
We are immediately faced with a complication. To whom is this commandment addressed? It was the Israelites who were brought out of Egypt, and so it may be that this first commandment is addressed only to them. However, in order to get our discussion off the ground, I propose that we assume that the Ten Commandments are addressed to the Hebrews and at least also to those whose religions “descend from” or “acknowledge” the Old Testament. (So much for my “rule of interpretation.”) This would include the Christians and Muslims, despite their differences, but not the Buddhists, Hindus, animists, or atheists. The alternative is to say that the Ten Commandments apply to everyone, but given the billions of people who do not consider themselves subjects of the god worshipped by Moses, that seems a bit presumptuous.
Moving on to the third sentence, we learn that we are to make no statues (apparently the favored interpretation of ‘graven images’) of any living thing—no statues or carvings of birds or fish, and none of land animals like cows and humans. In this version we are even forbidden to make “any manner of likeness” of these creatures, which seems to rule out drawings as well. Some say that this commandment just forbids us to worship these images or the beings they represent, but that is not what it says. It says that we are not to make the likenesses, and then it adds that we are not to bow down to them or serve them.
In the final part of the commandment we find God threatening to punish children to the third and fourth generation for the “iniquity of the fathers.” Early societies once had such laws and customs, but eventually they abandoned them, and so, apparently, did God. After mentioning the proverb that “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” Ezekiel, speaking for God, says “this proverb shall never again be used in Israel.” (Ezekiel 18:1-4) He adds: “It is the soul that sins, and no other, that shall die; a son shall not share a Father’s guilt, nor a father his son’s.” (18:20)
2. The Second Commandment
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
We should begin by asking what it is to take the name of God “in vain.”[2] One meaning of ‘vain’ is useless or fruitless. If I say that I tried “in vain” I am saying that my effort failed. But, assuming there is a god, it is not useless to use the name of God to refer to or to address God. So that is not a vain use. But If I use God’s name to call upon him for help, then my use of the name may be “in vain,” but only if my prayers are not answered, and that is up to God.
This commandment is usually taken to forbid swearing, but how is the use of God’s name to swear by, or even to swear with, a case of using the name in vain? If I say “God-damn you” I am using God’s name to express my dissatisfaction in the strongest terms, and perhaps I am calling upon God to damn you. These seem to be very useful uses of the name. Now consider this: if saying “God-damn you” is taking the name of God in vain, then why isn’t saying “God bless you” in the same boat?
Another version of this commandment forbids making a “wrong” use of the name of the Lord, but then leaves it completely undetermined what makes a use of that name wrong. The truth may be that neither the notion of “using a name in vain” nor the idea of a “wrong use of a name” makes enough sense to allow us to figure out what we are being commanded not to say.
3. The Third Commandment
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath in honour of the Lord thy God; on it thou shalt not do any work, neither thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger which is within thy gates; For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
There is an initial awkwardness here. The seventh day, apparently, is Saturday. The Seventh Day Adventists make a point of this, and so do observant Jews. But for Christians, Sunday is the new Saturday. How is this possible? God says “Rest on the seventh day” (Saturday), and we say, “OK, we get it, we’ll rest on the first day” (Sunday). And then later we decide to rest on both Saturday and Sunday. But there is no ambiguity in “six days shalt thou labour,” and no way out of the conclusion that the five day work week is contrary to this commandment. I wonder if ex-Chief Justice Moore wants us to revise our labor laws to reflect this.
The Third Commandment appears to be one of those rules most people consider just too inconvenient to take seriously—like waiting for the WALK sign on a Manhattan crosswalk. What would the world be like if we all took it upon ourselves to “do no work” on Sunday (or Saturday or both)? Public transportation would stop, hospitals and power plants would shut down, police and fire departments would be idle, the media would be silent, restaurants would be shuttered, sports at a standstill. People would die, and not just of boredom.
It is compassionate and useful to mandate rest for those who work—but the schedule needs to be determined by the needs of the worker and the task, not by some odd attempt to behave like God after he created the world. And by the way, why did God need to rest, or to take six days for that matter?
4. The Fourth Commandment
Honour thy father and thy mother; in order that thy days may be prolonged upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
It is not obvious what ‘honor’ means here. Should we understand the commandment as requiring us to respect our parents, or to praise them, or to try to please them? Perhaps we are to honor them by obeying them. Unfortunately there are fathers and mothers who do not deserve respect, or praise, or obedience, and in those cases this is a commandment best honored in the breech. On the other hand, when our parents do deserve respect, praise, or obedience, and especially when we love them and they us, we have no need for a seriously incomplete commandment backed by a bribe (or maybe a threat).
5. The Fifth Commandment
Thou shalt not kill. (commit murder)
This commandment, along with the sixth, which forbids stealing, is likely to be found in any code of conduct. It hardly takes a god to realize that our rules must forbid or curtail killing and stealing. But sometimes we must kill to prevent more killing, or steal to preserve a life, and God himself has ordered more killings than we can count. A general rule against killing is easy to state, and to carve in stone, but it leaves everything to those who interpret it. Some will read it broadly, others narrowly, and we will all argue that our favorite form of killing is either not killing, or if it is, it is an exception to the rule. “Thou shalt not kill” becomes “Thou shalt not kill needlessly,” or “Thou shalt not kill, unless you are in a situation where killing is OK.”
Sometimes the commandment is phrased “Thou shall do no murder.” But since murder just amounts to the “wrongful killing” of a human, this version of the commandment becomes the trivial: “Don’t kill anyone you shouldn’t kill.”
A final problem with the Fifth Commandment (a sin of omission?) is that it only talks about killing, and leaves the entire area of causing harm untouched. Actually none of the commandments says anything about injuring or causing pain to others. The Buddhists and Jains may serve and bow down to other gods, but they also embrace broad and demanding rules against harming any living being.
6. The Sixth Commandment
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
The Sixth Commandment provides us with the occasion to reflect on the nature of adultery. It does not have much to do with being an adult, as I once thought. Two unmarried people who are having sex are not committing adultery. One of them has to be married. But then is that person committing adultery and their unmarried sex partner not, or are both of them committing adultery? What status must your divorce have before you are considered “unmarried,” and hence unable to engage in adultery with another never married or adequately divorced person? How far can two married people go without actually committing adultery? And what about same-sex marriages and civil unions? Can a man commit adultery with another man if one of them is married to a man? Would a single woman who had sex with a man who is married to (or in a civil union with) another man be committing adultery?
However unorthodox the arrangements become, it does make sense to encourage, though not to require, sexual fidelity. This is another of those rules it doesn’t take an omniscient being to figure out. But it would take an omniscient being to figure out which, if any, of the countless forms of sexual contact need to be forbidden. This is not really something we want to leave up to legislators; many of them are quite experienced with infidelity, but they are usually far from omniscient.
7. The Seventh Commandment
Thou shalt not steal.
No law code can do without some version of this requirement, but this particular version is open to many interpretations. If we interpret ‘stealing’ narrowly, then we don’t steal unless we secretly take possession of some object that belongs to another. In that case, price gouging, plagiarism, and downloading from Kazaa do not count as stealing. If we interpret ‘stealing’ broadly, then many more things count as stealing, and we can steal a scene, a glance, or someone’s spouse. How widely or narrowly we define the word is up for grabs, and it wouldn’t matter what we said if it weren’t for the all those rules that forbid stealing. The music industry calls downloading music without paying for it “stealing,” but downloading music is different enough from paradigm cases of stealing to deserve a name of its own. How about calling it “file-sharing”? The Bible doesn’t appear to have forbidden that.
However we define stealing, there will still be times when even “secretly taking possession of some object that belongs to another” will be called for by common sense or compassion, and this will be the case even if God has forbidden stealing. So, as with the rule against killing, we will find ourselves either claiming that our favorite clandestine acquisitions are not instances of stealing, or that if they are, they are justified exceptions to the commandment.
8. The Eighth Commandment
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. (give false evidence)
The previous three commandments make sense to all of us. They indicate, if vaguely, the kind of behavior we demand from others. This seems to be the case with this one as well, though there is some additional unclarity here about what is being forbidden. The commandment does not forbid lying or deception as such, only certain lies. The legal formulation suggests that we are being commanded not to testify falsely against our neighbors in some sort of hearing. This limitation is also suggested by an alternative version of the commandment, which forbids us to “give false evidence.”
We might ignore the legal language and interpret the commandment as ordering us not to lie about our neighbors. But we will be asked who counts as a neighbor, to which there is no good answer, and we will asked what we are supposed to do if lying about a neighbor is the only way to save his life, to which there is a very good answer—“We lie.” In the end, it is better not to see this commandment as mandating truthfulness about our neighbors. It is more likely that we are being commanded not to lie to any official about anyone who lives in our village.
9. The Ninth Commandment
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
We still have not dealt with the question of who is to count as a neighbor, but now we face the additional task of making sure we understand what it is to covet our neighbor’s wife. Coveting anyone’s wife is not just finding her attractive, or even having an occasional fantasy about her; it is, rather, desiring her to an extreme and inordinate degree. To covet is to crave or long for something that belongs to someone else (as wives did in those days).
It is undeniable that coveting our neighbor’s wife (not to mention coveting our neighbor’s husband) can lead to trouble in the neighborhood and to violations of the Sixth Commandment. There is no doubt that a lot of this goes on, even though most of us have no way of telling when some episode of coveting is taking place. Perhaps this is a commandment whose enforcement is best left to God, who is capable of reading minds. I doubt that even Justice Moore is interested in establishing laws against wife-coveting. But if the legitimacy of the laws against stealing and killing are based on their being forbidden by a commandment, then this commandment and the next appear to warrant, or even demand, anti-coveting legislation.
10. The Tenth Commandment
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.
Our economy may be driven by the desire to own things as good as, or better than, the things owned by our neighbors, but the desire to “keep up with the Joneses” is not contrary to this commandment. I may intensely, even compulsively, desire to have a house, or a red BMW, or a brown ox, exactly like the one owned by my neighbor, but as long as I don’t desire his house, his car, his ox, or “anything that is his,” I am fine. It appears that this commandment is not prohibiting accumulation, or even greed, so much as ordering us to stop wanting each other’s belongings. Desire for the same make of car may lead to friendly competition, but desire for the very same car (or house, or wife) may lead (and has led) to violence and war. So this is definitely good advice, but as before, it is not something that tolerates legislation.
Conclusion. Our critical reading of the commandments has revealed that some of them are inappropriate to the life we now live, and others, while making sense for any society, are just too vague to be of any use. Only the commandments not to steal, kill, and lie in court touch on matters universally recognized as proper subjects for legislation. The others deal with things that many of us would say are none of the government’s business. We don’t want laws that suppress other religions, regulate our sex practices, tell us when to rest, or forbid art and coveting.
Since the Ten Commandments are so obviously flawed, why do so many of our contemporaries assert, and apparently believe, that they must be taken more seriously than any of our civil laws, and that our own laws ought to be made consistent with them? The answer may lie in the fact that moralists do not begin their moral deliberations by taking the commandments as basic principles or axioms from which values, obligations, and laws flow. They begin with their own particular values, their own understanding of proper behavior, and then they project that onto the commandments. They are against (some) stealing and (some) killing, so they project that complex of attitudes (with its own contours) onto the Fifth and Seventh Commandments. These commandments make sense and don’t seem hopelessly vague because when believers look at them they see their own set of evolving rules against stealing and killing.
If we take the Ten Commandments at face value, and not as they are interpreted by the self-serving hermeneutics of the ordinary sinner, it is hard to deny that they are narrow, intolerant, vague, and uninspired. They are an inadequate foundation for law and morality, and we might even have to call on law and morality for protection against them when they forbid art and promote intolerance. If we pretend that any of these commandments is better or more inspired than it is, we weaken our ability to evaluate and improve the laws and values we have already created. Perhaps we would not need to rely so heavily on the First Amendment and the courts if we were all a little more critical of claims without evidence and of anything said to have been carved in stone.
[2] It would also be helpful if we knew what name or names God had in mind. For the purposes of this paper I will make the useful assumption that at least one of God’s names is ‘God’.