At Mt. Sinai, after God’s thunderous voice proclaimed to the entire nation the fundamental ’10 Speakings’ or Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-13), these commandments where thereafter etch into two stone tables (Exod.31:18, and again in Exod. 34:1) and thereafter kept in the Ark of the Covenant in perpetuity.
Q: Why two
tablets?
A: They are
not one single list, nor even suitable as two columns on a single tablet,
because they deal with two radically different spheres.
The
Creator Tablet
The first
table I call the Creator Table.
It sets out the five (5) basics regarding God and His interaction
with the Children of Israel.
Firstly, God
intervenes in human history as evidenced by his actions in Egypt and the Exodus
of the Children of Israel from slavery (Exodus 20:2). He is not distant or uninvolved nor, as some
moderns suggest, a ‘watchmaker’ who ‘retired’ once His ‘watch’, i.e., the universe,
was created and set going.
Secondly,
the Children of Israel must be monotheistic and worship only the one,
true God who has no corporeal or bodily form.
I.e., There
is only one deity and not two (Zoroastrianism, Hwiccan, God vs. Satan) or three or entire families (Greek and Romans) or nature/animal spirits (North
American Indian).
And
consequently, it is forbidden to make any likenesses or images for worship to such false gods. And it is also forbidden
to make any idol image of God Himself as he is incorporeal.
As stated by Moses:
Deut. 4:12
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יב וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֲלֵיכֶם, מִתּוֹךְ הָאֵשׁ: קוֹל
דְּבָרִים אַתֶּם שֹׁמְעִים, וּתְמוּנָה אֵינְכֶם רֹאִים זוּלָתִי קוֹל. |
12 And
the LORD spoke unto you out of the midst of the fire; ye heard the voice of
words, but ye saw no form; only a voice. |
Maimonides elaborates this fundamental principle as #3 of his
“Thirteen Principals of Faith”.
3. I believe with complete faith that the
Creator, blessed be His name, is incorporeal; that He is free from all
anthropomorphic properties; and that He has no likeness at all[i].
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 the stated consequence affirms that God is
constantly around and listening.
The fourth
Commandment attests to the fact the Earth, all plant and animal life, the Sun
and Moon and Stars and the entire Universe are God’s doing and creation.
To
acknowledge this Divine act and gift, we are to also consecrate the 7th
day as a day of rest from ‘creative’ labour (ברה) (though physical exertion
labour (עבדה) is allowed).
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.”
Parents also
have the ability to create new human life: life that is described
in Genesis ch. 1 as having Divine characteristics:
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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. |
In Judaism, sexual
intercourse alone does not lead to pregnancy. The successful mingling of male
sperm and female egg occurs only when God so wills it.
This is a
recurring message in the Bible in the stories of the barren Sarah, Abraham’s
wife finally giving birth at age 90 (Gen. 18: 10-14, Gen. 21:1-2), Rebecca who
bore twins only after her husband Isaac prayed (Gen. 25:21), and Hannah, the
eventual mother of Samuel, who after many year finally conceived after praying to
God at the Tabernacle in Shiloh (1 Samuel 1).
Tamar had
sex with Judah only once, yet she became pregnant and an ancestor of King David through her son
Perez. (Genesis ch. 38, and Ruth 4: 18-22).
So, bearing
children, i.e., having parent-child relationships, is a gift from God and
deservedly part of the Creator Tablet.
The
Social Contract Tablet
The second
and separate tablet sets out the principles essential to maintain a civil society, and to promote peace and order among neighbours.
Commandments #6 through #9 prohibit
wanton murder, adultery, robbery and theft, and bearing false witness or perjury.
Every
society, whether tribal and with only oral rules and traditions to cultures with
lengthy legal codes and written statutes include these four fundamental
requirements.
Otherwise,
anger, greed, lust and even poverty would cause social chaos.
What makes
their presence especially noteworthy here is the following:
1. They are
Divine commandments and their infringement becomes automatically, if not
primarily, a sin against God.
2. The last
commandment on the second tablet, which I have not yet mentioned, is something
only God could except or ask. It deals with
“thought crime”; whereas human laws only focus on actions.
The last
commandment, #10, is
“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.” ( Exodus
20:13)
This last
commandment 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 thought.
3. There is
a reverse order and ladder of escalating crime that arises from the thought crime of
Commandment #10.
Commandment
#9: premeditated false witnessing (i.e., false words) 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) and, finally, at the top of the ladder, is
wanton, premeditated murder (#6).
The top two –
wonton murder and then adultery – are each punishable by death (Deut. 19:10-132
and Lev. 20:10).
Being a False
Witness has a sliding scale based on the charge facing the innocent person:
measure for measure, up to death in a murder case (Deut. 16-19).
Put simply, there
is a ladder of increasing anti-social
behaviours that undermine social order and societal cohesion with
Commandment #10 as its base.
What starts
with ‘thoughts’ escalate from small or easy to do crime/harm to the destruction
of families (= adultery) and human life (= murder).
4. Adultery
is a big no no.
One might
have expected adultery to be listed later: as we often think of murder and
robbery and theft as related criminal acts.
But on this tablet, adultery is higher up than robbery and theft.
Why? Because adultery, i.e., sex between a married
woman and a man other than her husband is catastrophic in its results.
Family
stability, the political alliances between families and clans and
tribes that were often the basis of arranged marriages, and the rights of
inheritance of the children to the ancestral estate, all hinge on the bond
between wife and husband.
The Napoleonic Code was somewhat lax regarding potentially illegitimate offspring from the wife, declaring: “The husband of the wife is the father of the child”.
But the
earliest Roman laws, The 12 Tablets (754-449 BC) already includes:
Table IV: 5 “A child born after ten months since the father's death will not be admitted into a legal
inheritance” http://www.crystalinks.com/romelaw.htm
Justification vs.
No Justification
The first Creator
tablet is very wordy. It has lengthy additions to each commandment: explanations,
threatened punishments and/or rewards.
In contrast,
the second Social Contract tablet is very brief: just 2 Hebrew words for #6, #7,
#8, and a single 5 word sentence for #9. Only #10, with its list of neighbour’s
assets, is longer at 14 words.
Its
commandments are direct and simple without lengthy explanations or stated
consequences.
So why the difference?
Why does the Creator
Tablet need ‘justifications’ and the Social Contract Table does not?
The answer, I believe, is fairly obvious.
The second
tablet contains rules that are so universal that they do not need further
explanation.
But the first
tablet is ‘new’ to the world.
The Creator
Tablet's commandments were not the ‘norm’ in the ancient world and to
follow them-- when surrounded by other cultures -- would be hard.
So the
stick-and-carrot approach is used.
· Commandment #1 says we owe God for He saved us from slavery in Egypt.
Commandment #2 prohibits worshipping other gods and creating idols or images for this are forbidden as God will reward the faithful for a 1000 generations and punish the wicked for up to 4 generations.
·
Commandment #3 states using God’s name in vain will
be severely punished: the details and ways are left to our imagination but the
punishment is certain.
·
Commandment #4 – Keep the Sabbath to affirm our
faith in God as the Creator of the Universe. This applies to adult males, adult
females, children, servants and slaves and even animals and delineated by the
commandment over 4 verses!
·
Commandment #5 – Respect your father and your
mother and you will be rewarded with long life “upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”
The reward is twofold: long life in
general, and long life on one’s ancestral land and property.
And implicit is that this can only happen if there is peace and no invading armies and wars of conquest.
CONCLUSION
The
commandments carved into the permanent rock of two separate tablets cover the
relationship with God on the first table, the Creator Tablet, and tablet two
covers the fundamental laws for peace and harmony in society – the Social
Contract tablet.
They cover
two separate spheres but are on identical stones and form a ‘matched set’: as
both are essential if people are to have good and happy lives with their neighbours
and with God the Eternal.
[i] This is the most literal and
accurate English translation, found at https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/107781/jewish/Ani-Maamin-I-Believe.htm
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