The Ten Commandments of Yahweh -- The Word Was God

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Date Posted: 23:55:29 08/05/02 Mon
Author: Mondo
Author Host/IP: 24.79.158.225
Subject: The Ten Commandments of Yahweh

http://members.aol.com/ps418/tc.htm

The Ten Commandments of Yahweh

Religious conservatives have decided that our nation has become too secular, and that this secularism is at least partially to blame for everything from increases in from drug use, to teen pregnancy, to school shootings, and so forth. As a partial remedy to the evils supposedly engendered by secular society, many conservative politicians have proposed that the Judeo-Christian "Ten Commandments" be posted in schools and other public buildings, such as courthouses.

Insofar as the "Ten Commandments" is clearly a sectarian religious document, a set of "divine commands" relevant to the Judeo-Christian religion only, such attempts are unconstitutional on the grounds that they constitute a prima facie endorsement of one religious view over and above all others. Public schools have no constitutional right whatsoever to post documents declaring "I am the LORD [Yahweh] thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt . . . Thou shalt have no other gods before me." There could really be no clearer violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment, since a reasonable person could obviously interpret the mere posting of such "divine commands" as an establishment of of the Judeo-Christian religion over other religions, or over no religion at all, by the state.

In order to avoid blatantly contradicting the establishment clause, the ten commandments could instead be posted as an historical document, discussed by students within the context of historical and cultural studies which might include other sets of moral commands, such as the Code of Hammurabi or the Dhammapada and so on. In this essay, we speculate as to what children might learn from such "historical" discussion of the ten commandments in particular.
Exodus 20:1-17: The Traditional Ten Commandments

1. I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

The first commandment has Yahweh, who describes himself as a "jealous God," proclaim by fiat that only he is to be worshipped. All other Gods are to be shunned, and the proper penalty for worshipping Gods other than the biblical God, as the Bible itself repeatedly makes clear, is summary execution, without trial or investigation.

"If your brother, your own mother's son, or your son or daughter, or your wife, or your closest friend, entices you in secret, saying, 'Come let us worship other gods'- whom neither you nor your fathers has experienced. . . do not assent. . . but take his life. Let your hand be first against him to put him to death, and the hand of the rest of the people thereafter. Stone him to death, for he sought to make you stray from the lord your god. . . Thus all of Israel will hear and be afraid, and such evil things will not be done again in your midst" (Deuteronomy 13:7-12).

As we shall see repeatedly, the biblical commandment not to kill cannot be taken as an absolute moral command, and was not even intended to be such by the author of Genesus. The Biblical God in fact commands the death penalty for a whole slew of offenses, such being homosexual (Lev. 20:13), being a witch (Ex. 22:18), saying bad things about Yahweh (Lev. 24:16), worshipping gods other than Yahweh (Deut. 17:2-5 RSV), not being a virgin on your wedding day (Deut. 22:20-21), striking one's parents or being a stubborn and rebellious son (Ex. 21:17 , Lev. 20:9), bestiality (Ex. 22:19, Lev. 20:15-16), working or performing prohibited activities on the seventh day of the week (Ex. 31:14-15; Num 15:36). Not only does the bible command the death penalty repeatedly, many biblical patriarchs were murderors, yet were praised by Yahweh as righteous people. Abraham not only submitted to the divine command to stab his own son to death, but sent his mistress Hagar and his illicit son Ishmael into the wilderness to an almost certain death. Luckily for Hagar and Ishmael, Yahweh intervenes at the last minute. Moses was a murderor, and incited others to murder as well. After some members of the camp took to worshipping a God other than Yahweh, in this case a golden calf, Moses, speaking with Yahweh's authority, commanded his own people to kill each other in a wild, indiscriminate bloodbath.

"Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men" (32:26-28).

This is the same Yahweh who, according to Christian evangelists and apologists, is a morally perfect entity, providing the sole ground and justification for all human moral values. But how can the theological God, who is all-loving and morally perfect, be reconciled with the consistent Old Testament portrayal of God as angry, jealous, vengeful and murderous? If Yahweh is a morally perfect being, and if all the actions of a morally perfect being are morally perfect actions, then all the actions attributed to Yahweh in the bible must be morally perfect. Thus the fundamentalist logic forces one to admit that accepted moral evils such as infanticide, gerontocide, genocide and slavery are actually morally perfect actions when their God performs them. Go figure.

The biblical Yahweh, who commanded genocide against whole nations (DEU 7:1-5), who incited his own "special people" to kill one another in a senseless riot (EX 32:37-8), who SPECIFICALLY demanded the murder of infants (1SAM 15:3; EZ 9:6), who caused men to engage in cannabalism (EZEK 5:10; ISA 49:26), who commanded incest, and who killed someone for refusing to comply (GEN 38:8-10; DEU 25:5-6), who engaged in deception (1KINGS 22:23; 2 THESS 2:11), and who demanded bloody animal sacrifices by the dozen (LEV 1:12; EXO 29:15-18; EXO 29:36, etc., ad infinitum), is portrayed in a light which would make Saddam Hussein look like a saint by comparison.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any 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 thyself 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 shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

The second commandment tells us that Yahweh is a jealous God, punishing not just those who make graven images, but also their innocent children and children's children, down to the fourth generation. Imagine the universal denunciation that would accompany the enactment of such policies in the modern world, say a policy that punishes the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of thiefs, for example. The whole premise that innocent people should be deliberately punished for the actions of their ancestors is both absurd and morally indefensible. Especially interesting is the fact that almost no Christian in the entire world obeys or even attempts to obey the first sentence, which states clearly that making images and likenesses of anything in heaven or earth is forbidden.

3. 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.

The third commandment is yet another affirmation of Yahweh's jealous nature and willingness to punish those who offend him.

4. 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 of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that any supernatural beings are concerned, or would have been concerned at any time in the past, with my weekend work schedule. No such apathy is apparent in the Old Testament, where the penalty for working on the sabbath is exactly the same as for worshipping other Gods -- death by stoning. In Numbers, the following touching story is recounted:

"While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had not been made plain what should be done to him. And the LORD said to Moses, 'The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.' And all the congregation brought him outside the camp, and stoned him to death with stones, as the LORD commanded Moses" (15:32-36).

One can imagine the discussions that would take place in history classes across the nation: "Mr. Smith, is it really true that Yahweh thought it was right to stone people to death for working on the wrong day of the week? If we are totally free to disobey the fourth commandment, why aren't we allowed to disobey the others?"

5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Nothing really to quarrel with here. I don't think there's a single society in the world, past or present, that explicitly valued the disrespect of one's parents. On the other hand, we should point out, for the sake of context, that the recommended biblical penalty for disrespecting one's parents is, you guessed it, summary execution by stoning. I certainly cannot claim to be morally perfect, but it certainly seems to my finite mind that murdering someone for rebelliousness is more immoral than rebelliousness itself.

"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city...and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from the midst" (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).

In the US, of course, there is only one offense for which the death penalty is applicable -- murder. If any state began executing people on the grounds that they were stubborn, rebellious, gluttonous drunkards, it would be condemned by all the world as "evil." But then again, we're talking about the bible, not the real world.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

The Bible shows, over and over again, that murder is not just perfectly acceptable, but commanded in many circumstances. We've already seen that the Torah commands the death penalty for worshipping Gods other than Yahweh, for saying bad things about Yahweh, for working on the sabbath, for being a stubborn and rebellious son, for being a homosexual, for not being a virgin on one's wedding day, for adultery, for bestiality, and for a variety of other seemingly trivial moral offenses. Yahweh himself, in passage after passage after passage in the Old Testament, commands the total annihilation of entire nations of people, man, woman and even innocent babies.

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1Samuel 15:3 ).

"As I listened, god said to the others, 'Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children...." (Ezekial 9:5-6).

"This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, ....and I told you, 'Let my son go, so he may worship me.' But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son" (Exodus 4:22).

Yahweh is a baby-killer, and a killer or old men and women. This is not a nasty poke at Christians, this is simply what the bible teaches.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Once again, the Biblical teaching on this point is self-contradictory. First of all, several Biblical patriarchs engaged in adultery, yet were still regarded as righteous men. King David, one of Jesus' own ancestors, is a case in point. In 1 Kings, Yahweh chides Jeroboam, saying:

". . . you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments, and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes. . ." (14:8).

But how can this be? 2 Samuel 11 shows clearly that David indulged in an illicit affair with Bathsheeba, even after being told that she was married to Uriah. Not only did David sleep with her, he got her pregnant. As if that weren't bad enough, David also arranges to have Bathsheeba's husband killed! "In the morning David wrote a letter to Jo'ab, and sent it by the hand of Uri'ah [!!]. In the letter he wrote, 'Set Uri'ah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die' " (11:14-15).

Despite the fact that 1 Kings tells us that David did "only that which was right" in Yahweh's eyes, 2 Samuel 11 says that Yahweh is offended by David's actions, and punishes him by killing the child of the illicit affair. Yahweh also decides to have David's wives fornicated with "before all Israel":

"'Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.'" (12:11-12).

It is again a mystery why Yahweh did not carry out justice in accord with his prior commands. Deuteronomy 22:23-24 stipulated that:

"If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you."

8. Thou shalt not steal.

Unless God tells you to, such as when Yahweh allowed the Israelites to plunder the cities and town which they conquered. Deuteuronomy 20:14, for instance, has Yahweh tell his people that they may take whatever they like from the cities they destroy:

"As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies"

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

Notice that one's neighbor is assumed to be a man, and that a man's wife is not to be coveted because, like houses, animals and slaves, a man's wife is his property. What's more, while we are told that slaves are not to be coveted, nowhere are we told that owning slaves is wrong to begin with. The reason for this is simple -- the authors of the Old Testament accepted slavery as a divinely ordained practice, not in the slightest degree morally objectionable.

Conclusion

In contrast with many nonbelievers, I think that disussion, in history or sociology classes, of the bible generally, and the ten commandments specifically, would be immensely valuable. So much of western history cannot be understood apart from the bible. Children for instance are taught that Galileo and others were persecuted by the church, but they are not taught that geocentrism and other discredited views are tacitly expressed in the bible. Slavery is another good example. Students in the US are taught that there was a civil war, and that the issue of slavery was a major source of contention between the North and the South. What they are not usually taught is that slavery had been justified on biblical grounds for thousands of years, and that there are numerous instances where the bible explicitly endorsed the institution of slavery. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, once said of slavery that "...it was established by decree of Almighty God ... it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation." Students are usually taught about the so-called "Witch Trials." Again, they are not usually taught that the bible itself teaches explicitly that "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and that this bible verse had been cited over and over again, for centuries, as justification for the interrogation, imprisonment, torture and murder of innocent people.

And so on. In these cases and many others, students are usually left in the dark about the role of the bible in European and American history, for fear of offending children whose only previous exposure to the bible was a few selective quotations in church on Sunday. Thus, nearly two-thousand years of barbaric and murderous religious suppression, if mentioned at all, is usually hastily dismissed as the indescretion of a few "quack" Christians. If those who ignore the past are truly doomed to repeat it, then we are bringing doom upon ourselves by supressing historically-informed and historically relevant discussion of the bible in our schools. On this point, I am in complete agreement with the conservatives.

Such discussion would surely have precisely the opposite effect intended by those who first wished to introduce it. How many children are ready to hear that the god of the bible ordered death sentences for working on saturday, or that the bible tells us to stone to death anyone who tries to introduce us to other religions, even if that person is one's own child? Rather than reversing the percieved tide of secularism, the study of the bible or the ten commandments would undoubtedly cause many more people to question their understanding of the biblical God than would otherwise have done so.

Appendix: Exodus 34: The "Other" Ten Commandments

Although most people assume that the Ten Commandments are the commands listed in Exodus 12, this list of commands is never referred to as "the Ten Commandments" by the author of Exodus. On the contrary, the only list of commands in Exodus identified as the ten commandments are those found in chapter 34.

Having smashed the first set of stone tablets in a fit of rage, Moses is instructed to make another set: "Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. " (v. 1). Having completed the new stone tablets, "Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him" (v. 4). Once Moses is upon the mount, Yahweh descends to meet him in a "cloud" (v. 5). Once the introductions have been completed, Yahweh declares ". . . Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the LORD: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee. Observe thou that which I command thee this day" (vv. 10-11).

1. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God (vv. 12-14)

2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods (v. 17).

3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt (v. 18).

4. All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male (v. 19).

5. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty (v. 20).

6. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest (v. 21).

7. And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end (v. 22).

8. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel (v. 23).

9. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning (v. 25).

10. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk (v. 26).

And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel . . . And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments (vv. 27-28).

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