UNDERSTANDING
THE BIBLE
“The 10 Speakings” עשרת הדברות / עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים
Why 2 stone tablets?
Why 2 stone tablets?
Observations
#2
Question: Why on stone?
As
the Torah or Chumash contains hundreds of commandments, 613 according to Jewish
tradition, why do these 10 get special treatment and engraving in stone?
After
all, they were recorded in the parchment of Moses’s Torah scroll in Exodus ch.20
and restated by him in Deut. Ch.5.
Answers:
1. Unlike parchment,
papyrus, clay tablets or paper --stone is permanent and eternal.
This
made clear that these 10 commandments have an extra level of importance and
primacy; for they are the fundamentals of Judaism’s relationship with God
and the keystones to maintaining familial and societal order and harmony. (See
further below.)
The
stone tablets (i.e, the broken first set and the unbroken second set) were kept
in the Ark of the Covenant for posterity
(Exodus
25:21, Deuteronomy 10:2,5).
2. The tradition of engraving
important ‘messages’ in stone was common practice in the ancient Near
East.
Giant,
stand-alone towering obelisks were
placed before temples and in public areas to make everyone aware of a
pharaoh’s or Assyrian/Mesopotamian
king’s conquests and achievements[i].
The
famous Rosetta stone, whose trilingual text allowed linguists to ‘rediscover’
how to read hieroglyphics, is a fragment of a much larger black granite pillar
listing a series of Ptolemaic royal decrees[ii].
The
world’s oldest surviving peace treaty – the full text -- is engraved on the walls
of two of Ramses II’s temples, while clay tablet fragments have been found in
the Hittite royal archive at Hattusa. A copy is also now prominently displayed on
the wall of the UN headquarters in New York[iii].
And
the 282 laws of the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi were engraved on a black
pillar placed prominently in the Babylonian temple of their god, Marduk.[iv]
So
having the key 10 commandments recorded in stone was not unique.
The
use of stone would not have been a surprise to the Israelites, as it was
consistent with the readily visible Near Eastern traditions and concepts of
highlighting key royal ‘messages’ in permanent rock.
Observations #3
Question: Why Two Tablets – not One?
The 10 Speakings
were not only recorded on parchment in Exodus ch 20 (and reviewed by Moses in
his sermon in Deut. 5) but engraved in stone and kept in the Ark of the
Covenant for posterity.
Question:
Why were they not carved (either on the first time or second time) on a single
tablet but split over two tablets?
Answer: Because they deal with two radically different spheres.
The
Creator Tablet
The first
table I call the Creator Table. It sets out five (5) basic principles
and commandments regarding God, the Creator, and our interactions with Him.
·
Firstly,
God intervenes in human history as evidenced by his actions in Egypt and the
exodus of the Jewish people from slavery (Exodus 20:2 and Deut. 5:6).
So He is not a distant or uninvolved ‘watchmaker’ who ‘retired’
once His ‘watch’, i.e., the universe, was created and set going.
·
Secondly,
God is the only Deity in the universe (Exodus 20:3-5 and Deut. 5:7-9) and
has no physical shape: no body or form.
Consequently the faithful are not to pray or bow down to the various false
gods worshipped by other peoples: the natural objects in the
sky, or on the land or in the oceans (e.g., sun, moon, trees, animals) nor any
pseudo-humans such as Mesopotamian Marduk or Egyptian Isis or Greek Zeus, etc..
And certainly not to make any images of them for worship, nor any speculative ‘representation’ of the one and only, non-corporeal God.
Moses elaborates this in Deut. 4:12 and 15-19, and in the mystical
experience of God’s presence in Exodus 34:18-23.
It is also a key feature stressed by Maimonides as #3 of his Thirteen Principals of Faith.
#3.
I believe with perfect faith
that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, has no body, and that He is free from
all the properties of matter, and that there can be no (physical) comparison to
Him whatsoever.[v]
·
The
third Commandment is “Thou shall not use God’s name in vain”. Treating the Divine name frivolously or
through false oath is wrong and will be punished as God is constantly around
and listening.
·
The
fourth Commandment – keeping the Sabbath --attests to the fact the Earth, all its
plant and animal life, and the Sun and Moon and Stars and the entire Universe
are God’s doing and His creation.
To
acknowledge this Divine act and gift, we are to consecrate the 7th
day as a day of rest from ‘creative’ labour (ברה) (though physical exertion
labour (עבדה) is allowed).
The 4th
Commandment can also be seen as an elaboration and reinforcement of the second commandment and declaration of monotheism:
that there is only one deity and creator: not two (Zoroastrianism,
Hwiccan, God vs. Satan) or three or entire families (Greek and Romans) or
nature/animal spirits (North American Indian) as believed by all other ancient
nations and cultures.
· The
fifth Commandment – which may seem out of place in a ‘Creator tablet’, fits
here too.
“Honour (or show respect to) your father and mother.”
“Honour (or show respect to) your father and mother.”
Parents have
the ability to create new human life; life that is described in Genesis
ch. 1 as having Divine characteristics:
כז וַיִּבְרָא
אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ, בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ: זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה, בָּרָא
אֹתָם.
|
27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and
female created He them.
|
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0101.htm
Moreover, the
Bible repeatedly asserts that sexual intercourse alone does not lead to
pregnancy and that the successful mingling of male sperm and female egg occurs only
when God so wills it.
That is made
clear in the stories of the barren Sarah, Abraham’s wife, Rebecca who bore
twins only after her husband Isaac prayed (Gen. 25:21), the Divine role in both
the fertility of Leah, the unloved wife, (Gen. 29:31 and again Gen. 30:17), Rachel’s
complaint to Jacob re: being barren and his reply (Gen. 30:2), God finally ‘remembering’
Rachel (Gen 30:22), and Hannah, the
eventual mother of the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel ch.1).
Tamar had
sex with Judah only once yet she became pregnant and became the ancestor of
King David. (Gen ch. 38)
So
Commandment #5 truly belongs on the Creator tablet.
The
Social Contract Tablet
The second
and separate tablet in direct and terse language sets out the principles
essential to maintain a civil society and promote peace
and order among neighbours. (Exodus 20: 12-13 and Deut. 5: 16-17)
·
The
6th prohibits wanton/premeditated murder.
·
The
7th prohibits adultery.
·
The
8th prohibits robbery and theft.
·
The
9th prohibited baring false witness and perjury.
Every
society: whether tribal and with only oral rules and traditions to cultures with
lengthy legal codes and written statutes, include these first four of these fundamental
requirements.
Otherwise,
freedom of action out of anger, greed, lust and even poverty would cause social
chaos.
But as they
are cited in the Bible as ‘Divine commandments’ – not just rules made up by a
king or society -- their infringement
becomes automatically, a sin against God. They are, thereby, twice immoral, and
subject to Divine punishment when human police and courts fail to succeed.
·
Lastly,
the 10th prohibits lustful desires
for another’s property, wife, animals, etc.
Exodus 20:13.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shalt not covet
thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox,
nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.”
By prohibiting ‘thoughts’ that are anti-social, this last commandment
goes beyond anything a human society can monitor or punish, but which is within
God’s divine realm.
Only God could ask or expect or monitor such ‘thought crimes’, as human
rules and laws only focus on actions.
Consequently, its inclusion can be seen as further proof of the tablet’s
Divine origin.
Moreover, Commandment
#10 is the key to preventing the harmful actions of #6, #7, #8 and #9.
It warns that
becoming mentally and emotionally fixated on what belongs to a
neighbour or another will lead to the various preceding crimes.
Put
simply, actions arise from thoughts.
The Ladder of Crimes
It is also noteworthy that the commandments on the 2nd tablet have a reverse order and ladder of escalating crime that arises from the “thought crime” of Commandment #10.
Lying (#9)
may seem far less harmful than actual theft (#8,) and even theft, which is
punishable by compensation and a fine, is far less harmful than adultery (#7) –
punishable by death; and, finally, at the top of the ladder, is wanton, premeditated
murder (#6). Like adultery, the
punishment in the Bible for murder is death.
So what start with ‘thoughts’ (#10) escalate from small or easy to do harm to the
destruction of families (= adultery) and human life (= murder).
