Text for the Week: The Lord Alone

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17

Then God spoke all these words,

² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³ you shall have no other gods before me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me ⁶ but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

⁷ “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰ But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

¹³ “You shall not murder.

¹⁴ “You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵ “You shall not steal.

¹⁶ “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

¹⁷ “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Questions

1. What is the purpose of the Ten Commandments and how should we read this passage?
2. What does Exodus mean to have other gods before God?
3. Why does the passage use a singular form of “you” if the passage is addressed to the whole community?
4. How do the commandments that follow verse 3 work with that first commandment?

Background

Related Scriptures: Psalms 50:16-20; Matthew 2:1-12, 5:17-48, 12:29-31;

Verse 2 is a royal identification that established God as Israel’s king, and this is the only place where God addresses the entirety of the Israelite community.

Verse 3 is a complete prohibition of having other gods in God’s presence and reflects an idea of ancient kings placing images of the gods of defeated kings in the temple in their capitol.

The Ten Commandments are not laws in the sense we are typically used to but are principles that are meant for people to meditate on to help them govern their own behavior, so there is less need for the proliferation of laws under God’s rule.

Reflection

It might seem strange to focus on the first of the Ten Commandments in the week when we celebrate the Magi’s arrival in Bethlehem. But as the song We Three Kings reminds us, the magi’s gifts are meant to highlight Jesus as “king and God and sacrifice”. The reality that we celebrate Jesus as both king and God provides the text of Exodus 20 with additional meaning. The opening of the Exodus 20 is written to make it abundantly clear that God is the true king of Israel and that the instructions that follow are meant as a Royal (and Divine) decree about how God expected the community to function participating in God’s kingdom. This kingdom begins with a prohibition of other deities. Even though we call these the Ten Commandments, they are not laws in the sense that they provide us with clearcut regulations, rather these Ten Words are principles, which are meant to meditated on so they can found the bedrock of our an ethical code. Understood this way it makes sense that the first (highest priority) principle we are mean to contemplate is the relationship between God and other deities worshipped in this world. English translations often do us a disservice here because they render the verse in such a way that seems to mean that other deities should not be worshiped or even, they should not be worshipped ahead of God. But this does not capture the whole sense being conveyed, In the ancient world kings would take the idols from the temples of conquered peoples and set them up in their own sanctuaries (1 Sam. 5:1-2). The idea was to make a show of power and dominance, that the god of the conquering king was greater than the god(s) of the vanquished. This context helps us understand how we are to meditate on this first word to us.

We are meant to understand that God shares no space with other deities, even if those other deities are in a subservient or conquered position. This idea is easy to understand on one level, because we have an Old Testament full of stories of Israel being led astray by foreign idols. I can flip through the pages of my Bible and understand that when Israel gave any place to the Ba’als of the people around them they began to grow distant from God. But this idea is of limited help because while there are still other religions and deities worshiped in this world, few if any people are truly polytheistic where they worship multiple deities. Instead we need to meditate more on the principle encapsulated in the First Word so we can apply it more readily to our own situation in the modern world and in light of Jesus. The principle that I think God is conveying through this word is that we cannot give thought to other ways of living in the world (represented by other deities) because they will lead us away from learning to live in the world the way God desires. The Ten Words are meant to be a shorthand list to provide material about how to live in the world the way God desires. And if we are keeping ourselves from other deities, we are then also keeping ourselves from other visions for the world and how we live in it.

This brings us to the Magi and their gifts to Jesus; in identifying Jesus as “king and God and sacrifice” the Magi are placing Jesus in the role of God in Exodus 20:3. This idea is frequent in the New Testament, most notably when Paul speaks of Jesus being equal with God (see 1 Cor. 8:6). Jesus becomes the lens through whom we see the world. This means that to live out this First Word in the light of Jesus is to focus on how Jesus lived and what Jesus taught to the exclusion of all other ways of living in the world. This does not mean that we cannot learn from others, we can, what it means is that when we are learning to understand our world and our place in it our thoughts are dominated by how Jesus lived in this world. We do not allow ourselves to give other ways of living in the world the time of day in our lives but instead learn from Jesus’ example. Crowning Jesus as king is about learning to meditate on life from the perspective of Jesus and his reign in this world. As we begin this new year each of us should take the time to meditate on what it means to reorient our lives under Jesus’ reign and to focus on how the Ten Words of Exodus and indeed all of Scripture can be seen as an extension of Jesus’ rule.