Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:24-26

24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.

25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.

In the last post we discussed how the Israelites were not to create any graven image, even of the Lord Himself. Today we see that this forbidding of graven religious artifacts extended also to the altar upon which they would make their sacrifices. They were not to carve the stone into closely-fitting shapes, but instead would lay the rocks in a rough and natural pile.

God goes so far as to say that using a tool on the stone would pollute it. The altar was the most sacred place in the Jewish faith, and so it was to be a work of God alone. God crafted the rocks of the earth, and man was not supposed to try and improve on that. If they did, it would be an altar of men, not of the Lord.

Neither were they to craft stairs leading up to the altar, but approach it on level ground. The reason given is not because the stairs would be a constructed edifice, though, but because there might be a risk of the priestly skirt exposing a man as he ascended the stairs. For later altars the Lord would instruct the Israelites to elevate it up in the air, but by that point He also would have instructed the priests to wear breeches underneath their skirts.

This is a recurring pattern in the Biblical account. The Lord requires a holy practice of His people, but He modifies its requirement according to their capability at the time. Another example would be how the newly-freed Israelites, wandering back-and-forth through the wilderness, were told to construct a tabernacle that was portable and modest, whereas at the height of their power—under the reign of King Solomon—the temple would be a vast and permanent construction. In some things the Lord demands sudden, dramatic changes, but in other things He leads His people by degrees.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:22-23

22 And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.

23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold.

God had commanded the people that they were not to make any graven images. In today’s verses He goes further to say that they must not make idols even of Him. Yes, He is their God, but they are not to try and recreate Him in any physical fashion.

One obvious reason for this is so that the idol would not become a distraction from the actual God. By pouring their devotion into a figure, they might compromise their relationship with the actual, living Lord. We do something similar when we obsess over a particular interpretation of the gospel, and hold to it at the expense of all other parts. We are more devoted to the image in our head of God, than to God Himself.

Another reason for not creating any idols of God is because God would create His own image. It would be a living, walking, talking image, even a man in the flesh, Jesus Christ. All the worshippers of Horus and Ra and Baal and Ashtaroth made images that were static, mute, and dead, just as the gods they represented were dead. Only God could create a living image, because only God was truly alive.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:20-21

20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

I find very interesting the last phrase in today’s verses: “Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.” This sounds counterintuitive. The scriptures describe God as being synonymous with the light, the entity that dispels the darkness. Why would Moses go into darkness to meet the Lord?

We have to ask, “what was causing the darkness that Moses stepped into?” Looking back on verse 18, I assume that it was “the mountain smoking.” It seems that Moses stepped into the darkness of the smoke to find the Lord within. But, of course, what one finds within smoke is a flame. It wasn’t that God was the darkness, but that He was the light within the darkness. This idea returns at other points as well, such as when John gives his testimony of the Word that was with God, and he uses the phrase: “the light shineth in darkness.”

We do not come across God as a bright spot in an already well-lit room. We find Him shining in the midst of the deepest darkness, darkness that we must step into before we find Him. Stepping into that darkness means facing our deepest fears, confessing our most shameful secrets, enduring our most painful afflictions, and ultimately passing into the darkness of death itself. This is a most fascinating aspect of our faith. We do not just believe that God is good, but that He is the good that we can only find through the darkest experiences of our life.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:18-19

18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off.

19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

Today’s verses seem to go back before Moses ascended the mountain and received the ten commandments, the first moment the noise and power of the Lord was made manifest upon the mountain. These verses seem to take place in-between, or just after, Exodus 19:19 and Exodus 19:25.

In this account it is apparent how great of a fear came upon the people, and how they desired not to draw near to or speak with the Lord, for fear that they would die under the power of His word. To be clear, we have not heard of any threatening word or action from the Lord in this moment, His power has been restricted to the mountain, not invading into their camp. So the Israelites fear of God is not based on any malice, but because His glory and power is too great for them to bear.

There are those today who make light of God, openly mocking Him and portraying Him as a bumbling fool. It is safe that no one who does this has actually glimpsed the true Lord of Heaven and Earth. No one would dare to speak irreverently if they had seen and known the terrible majesty of His purifying glory. One day, all of us will witness that tremendous glory, and when we do it is said that even the kings and the mighty will beg the “mountains and rocks, to fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne!” (Revelations 6:16). Like the Israelites, we will be in terrible fear, and we would then desire a representative, even a mediator, to be able to stand before God in our place.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:17

17 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.

The final commandment is a unique one. It goes deeper than the acted out behaviors to address the inner, conceptual thoughts and desires. It is not enough to refrain from stealing our neighbor’s things, it is wrong to even lust for those things. It is not enough to refrain from committing adultery with our neighbor’s wife, it is wrong to even lust for her.

Desires, of course, are not entirely in our control. By our lifestyle we can foster certain positive or negative trends in them, but even with the purest of habits we will surely encounter invasive thoughts that would be impure to put into practice. Thankfully, having a random impulse is not the same as “coveting.” Coveting is making a choice to dwell on the unholy notion, to entertain it, to fantasize over it.

Also, we are not told that all things are wrong for us to hold a long and burning passion for. God’s commandment does not tell us that we cannot aspire to obtain a certain status in life, or to earn a certain accomplishment, or to marry a certain spouse. What we are not to obsess over is that which already belongs to another. We are each meant to seek our own. We have no justification in lusting for that which God has already given to our neighbor.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:16

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

The penultimate commandment is that we do not bear false witness towards our neighbor. Bearing “false witness” applies in a formal, legalistic sense, meaning that we must not falsely testify against someone before a court. It also applies in a more informal, social sense, meaning that we must not tells rumors and gossip, tearing down the reputation of another on spurious claims.

Of course, this commandment is specifically decrying “false” claims. It is not saying that we must never sue for justice when our neighbor has genuinely wronged us, nor that we cannot give genuine cautions against the real and perverse behaviors of a neighbor. This commandment assumes that there is such a thing as the “truth,” and that we are to align ourselves to it. We may never know the entire truth of another person, but we do know when we are concocting a lie about them, and that is what is forbidden.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:15

15 Thou shalt not steal.

The eighth commandment tells us that we must not take the things that belong to another. Perhaps more than any other, this commandment shows us the transcendental nature of morality. It is something that goes beyond our physical nature, into a realm that can only be called spiritual.

For certainly the idea that we “own” anything is only an illusion, at least from a natural point of view. What makes something belong to us? We might say that we own something and have that claim recognized by society, but nature does not respect that claim at all. Nature isn’t convinced that an item belongs to me just because my toil and labor brought it into being, or because some made-up standard says I “earned” it, or because I made some marks on it that match the initials of my name, or because I found it and touched it first. None of those things fundamentally bind that item to me in the eyes of nature. Nature does not see the item as an unextractable part of my person, nor will it make the item perish when I do, nor will it prevent the item from being given to another, nor will it stop the item from being lost or destroyed at any moment.

And yet, even a toddler knows that something is his. Even a toddler knows when something is stolen from him. We may not be able to explain ownership and theft materialistically, but we know they are real. God, evidently, knows they are real also, and He forbids it directly.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:14

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Another very brief commandment, this one forbidding married individuals from breaking their marriage covenant and having sexual relations with anyone other than their spouse. Of course, this one commandment does not cover the entire breadth of sexual sin. It does not mention anything about fornication, or bestiality, or incest, or homosexuality. However, just because all these matters are not covered in the ten commandments does not mean that they are not covered elsewhere in the word of God. Here in the mountain Moses received the foundational rules of God’s law, but there were other visits to the mountain, and other details yet to come. Leviticus, for example, has several chapters that cover the other sexual perversions that are expressly forbidden by God.

I think it is fair to say, though, that adultery is the root evil that all other sexual perversions are an extension of, and this explains why it would be forbidden first in the ten commandments. Calling out adultery points to the fact that sexuality is fundamental to the union between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage, and so it is the perversion of that order that constitutes a sin. Whether we also pervert that order by having sexual relations before we are married, or with people that we cannot be married to, or with animals, it all follows the idea of breaking apart the marriage covenant and taking the things which belongs to it elsewhere. All sexual sin is in the spirit of adultery.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:13

13 Thou shalt not kill.

A very brief and succinct commandment, one that speaks to the sanctity of life, and the immense evil when one takes it from another. Of course, though the words here are simple, there is some nuance that applies to this commandment. For while the Israelites had been ordered not to kill, they were also going to be commanded to go to war with the Canaanites, and thus would kill tens of thousands of their enemies. And they were also commanded to kill animals at the altar as an offering to the Lord. How can these commandments coexist with one another?

The confusion goes away when we consider the original Greek word that has been translated to our English word “kill.” In fact, there are two Greek words that get turned into “kill” or other variations of that word in the English translation.

One of them is שָׁחַט (shachat), which is used elsewhere in Leviticus 14:13 as it describes how the priest will kill the offering that is being made in the temple.

The other one is רָצַח (ratsach), which is used elsewhere in Numbers 35:16 as it describes how a man who kills another with an iron weapon is a murderer.

So there is a word for “to kill,” and another word for “to murder.” And the word used here in the 10 commandments is the second one: רָצַח (ratsach), which is “to murder.” We could consider the English translation of this verse to be more accurate if we rendered it as, “Thou shalt not murder.” And now we see how the Israelites could be commanded to go to war against the Lord’s enemies, and to slay animals in their offerings, because both of those would be examples of “killing,” but not of “murdering.” If the distinction between those two does not matter to some, it does apparently matter to God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 20:12

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

The fifth commandment describes the attitude that children should have towards their parents. One may wonder why there isn’t a commandment pointing the other direction, telling parents how they ought to feel towards their children. Having been both a child and a parent, I would say that the nature of the parent is already to love the child and seek what is best for him. Though the parents may give unwanted advice, they generally only do so with a sincere desire to help. The nature of the child, however, is often one of defiance, with an impulse to disobey for the sole purpose to be contrary. That is the tendency that needs to be reigned in, and so a commandment to spell that out.

It is interesting how this commandment links honoring one’s parents and living long upon the land. It seems to suggest that to not honor one’s parents is likely to result in a premature death. Why is that? One explanation could be that it is a divine promise, an assurance from God that He will intervene in the cause of the honorable child to preserve life. Another explanation might be that it is an observation of the natural trends in humanity. Perhaps when a generation as a whole decides to dishonor the generations that came before they are carving their own foundation out from under themselves, and will inevitably fall back to a more barbaric and violent lifestyle, and that will certainly result in their days being shorter upon the land.