1. It is generally thought that the Commandments were originally received and written down in a much shorter form than that in which (with some variation) they appear in Exo_20:1-26 and Deu_5:1-33 -perhaps something as follows:-
1.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me (or besides) me.
2.
Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image.
3.
Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain.
4.
Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day.
5.
Honour thy father and thy mother.
6.
Thou shalt do no murder.
7.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8.
Thou shalt not steal.
9.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
10.
Thou shalt not covet.
The first word enforces the unity of God, as against the ethnic ideas of merely local, limited, or competing divinities (Elohim). The second teaches the spirituality of God, and so condemns idolatry. God is not to be localized or materialized in man's thought. The third asserts the holiness of God, and the supreme claim which His revelation of Himself has upon man's reverence. The fourth, re-emphasizing a primeval institution, proclaims God's right to the consecration of man's time, his labour, and his rest. The remaining six deal more directly with man, with the consecration of the national and individual life to Jehovah. The fifth and seventh enjoin the sacredness of family life and its relationships; the sixth, the sanctity of the individual life; the eighth, of property; the ninth, of reputation; while the tenth deals not only with acts of oppression and injustice, but also with the motive that might prompt them. Throughout the series the great principle is seen that morality is founded on truth respecting God; and the fundamental error of the heathen world is refuted, which divorced religion from morals, and thought the former was to be satisfied by the due performance of rites and sacrifices. The law of Sinai is rightly summed up both in the Old and in the New Testament by the two great commandments: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”; “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Deu_6:5; Lev_19:18).
“Thou shalt have none other gods but me.” If man had been able to keep this one commandment perfectly the other nine would never have been written; instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, and perhaps never more than now in the twentieth century. Ah, well! this world, in spite of all its sinning, is still the Garden of Eden where the Lord walked with man, not in the cool of evening, but in the heat and stress of the immediate working day. There is no angel now with flaming sword to keep the way of the Tree of Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the Hostel of God to point us to it; and we, who are as gods knowing good and evil, partake of that fruit “whereof whoso eateth shall never die”; the greatest gift or the most awful penalty-Eternal Life.1 [Note: Michael Fairfess, The Roadmender, 52.]
2. It has been thought by some that, since there were two stone tables of the Divine inscription, the ten commandments were equally divided between them, five on each. If this were so, the law about our honouring our parents would be on the same level with the four that refer to God, and this might be justified by the reflection that in honouring them we really honour Him, in whom every family in heaven and earth is named. But on the whole the old division into four and six is better, the first regarding our duty to God, and the second our duty to man.
The Ten Words can be counted up in more ways than one. What the Jews have for many years regarded as the First Word, “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” is unlike all the other Words in being an assertion, not a prohibition or a command. It is true that the Ten Commandments are not called in the Bible Mitzvot, commands; but Debarim, words. Still, our First Word sounds very like an introduction to what follows. Many people therefore suppose that what we call the Second Commandment includes two commands in one, and comprises really both the First and Second Commandments. In that case the First Commandment would forbid the worship of any other god except the one and only true God; the Second Commandment would forbid the making of any material emblem or symbol of the one true God, or the making of any idol or image of any created thing for the purpose of worship. We have no clue from the Bible as to which way of counting the Words is the right way. The earliest authorities we have (who are two Jews, called Philo and Josephus) reckon the Words the second way, and they are counted so to the present day.1 [Note: C. G. Montefiore, The Bible for Home Reading, i. 92.]
3. Duty to God stands first, and lays the needful foundation for the right discharge of our duties to man. The love of God is the foundation of all love to our fellows. Neglect the duties of piety, and you will soon neglect your duties to your neighbour. The Scripture does not ignore the distinction between religion, i.e., the duties we owe to God, and morality, i.e., the duties implicated through earthly relationships, but it unites the two in the deeper idea that all duty must be done to God, who is above all, through all, and in all. The precepts of the first table enjoin that God be honoured in His being, worship, name, and day. The precepts of the second follow naturally, requiring that he who loves God should love his brother also, who is made in the image of God; and surely that love implies that he will refrain from injuring him in deed, in word, and in thought-in his person, his wife, his property, or his reputation.
Mr. Herbert Spencer maintains that the ghost theory, originally suggested by dreams of the dead, is the origin of all belief in God. If so, how extraordinary it is, that in the most coherent and strictly developed of all ancient religions there is hardly a vestige of this ghost theory,-Saul's vision of Samuel in the witch of Endor's house is the only one I can at present recollect,-while nevertheless the enunciation of an authoritative moral law, far in advance of the intellectual stage of culture which would appear to correspond to it, takes place in the very nursery of the race, and in the very centre of its first great scene of trial! Is it conceivable to any one that the ghost of a great ancestor could have originated the Decalogue? Whence did these severe restraining precepts come, if they did not come from a real power above man? To one who assumes the view of the purely physical origin of man, how should so early an outbreak of what would, on that hypothesis, be the pure superstition of a spiritual and rigidly restraining power, be accounted for?… It seems to me perfectly certain that the early incorporation of such a law as the Decalogue in human history is an incontrovertible proof, first, that physical law is not the root of human character, but moral law; and next, that the moral law was revealed to us, and in us, long before the intellect had begun to stride forward with anything like its full power; in other words, that, instead of being the mere fruit borne by that power, it was the ultimate guide and ruler and director of that advancing intelligence which now claims to be its master.1 [Note: R. H. Hutton, Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, 108.]
