Several weeks ago, I wrote about viewing Scripture as a six-act play. Act 1 was the creation of the heavens and earth and the placement of Adam and Eve in Eden. Act 2 was the rebellion of humanity against God. Act 3 began with Abraham's call and the Israelites' birth. It continues up to the birth of a child in Bethlehem.
Act 3 began with the call of Abraham and the saga of his family down through Joseph and the sojourn of the people into Egypt. The next scene is the Exodus of the people from Egypt and into Canaan (after a lengthy detour.) Immediately after they depart from Egypt, God takes Moses up on Sinai and explains what God expects from God's chosen people.
Significantly, the Ten Commandments begin with God identifying as the one "who brought you out of the land of Egypt," not as the universe's creator and sustainer. God's instruction is based on the special relationship with a people God has chosen and not just as supreme Lord. The Ten Commandments are to be the moral and ethical foundation for God's chosen people in contrast to the rest of the world.
Catholic and Lutheran traditions believe verses two and three of Exodus 20 to be a preamble. They split verse seventeen into two commands, one about "coveting your neighbor's house" and the other about "coveting your neighbor's wife. This makes three commandments concerning our relationship with God and seven about our relationship with each other. Most Protestant traditions see verses two and three as the first command and view verse seventeen as one command. This makes four commands about our relationship with God and six about our relationship with each other. Either way, there is a clear division into two types of commands. Look first at the God-focused commands.
Why no other gods and no graven images? As I noted in earlier posts, fallen humanity must worship. Being estranged from God through sin, we create false gods to give our lives the illusion of order and meaning. It has been common to erect symbols as representations of our gods to make these gods more real to us.
Abraham had come from Babylonia, where there were many Gods. The Israelites had just left Egypt, where there were several gods. Also, the Israelites were about to enter Canaan with its panoply of Baal and Asherah gods. The Ten Commandments interject something startling into history. They insist on monotheism. "No other gods before me" does not mean Yahweh should be first in line among other gods. It means there are to be no other gods before or in God's presence.
A common symbolization of the gods in Babylonia, Egypt, and Canaan was cattle. The irony of the biblical story is that just as Moses received his instructions, Aaron was "passing the hat" through the camp to collect gold so he could make a golden calf. Upon completion, he said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" (Exodus 32:4 NRSV) The Hebrew Elohiym is translated as "gods" here and is one of God's names, although it can have other connotations.
Some commentators suggest that Aaron was not outright rejecting Yahweh but was mixing the worship practices of the region with the worship of God. These practices entailed extremely licentious behavior. Syncretism was the sin here, and it would plague the people for centuries in Israel. God denounced any representation of God and demanded that God alone be worshiped according to directions. God also proscribed any use of God's name that would trivialize or minimize God's authority.
Finally, there is no known precedent for the Sabbath in ancient culture. The lives of the ancients were a continuous oppressive effort to survive. Work was ceaseless except to worship the gods from whom they hoped to earn divine favor. God entered the picture and told the people that their survival depended not on their frenetic efforts but on their faithfulness to God. The Sabbath was a time to cease labor and demonstrate their reliance upon God. It was also a time for people to reconnect with God and God's purposes. The Sabbath was a defiant contrast to the oppressive, fearful lives of the people in the land.
The worship of God alone, combined with Sabbath observance, was a direct assault on the illusions of the surrounding cultures.
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