Moral Guidance For The Ages: The Ten Commandments

Moral Guidance For The Ages: The Ten Commandments

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Shabbat Yitro, February 5, 2021

How do we see God? Where can we find a force so great that can cause the universe to come into being—yet has no form or shape itself and is unmeasurable by any instrument we know?

From the day humans uttered the first “why?” people have tried to create an image of this force we so wanted and needed to believe in.

From the crudest and most primitive clay figurines to Michelangelo’s magnificent mural in the Sistine Chapel, visions of gods and goddesses fill our art and literature.

Individuals claimed to see the Divine in dreams or visions; they heard voices in the wind; they saw God’s presence in fires, plagues and other natural events.

And that’s why the Ten Commandments stay so unique in all of human experience. 

It isn’t only that God was revealed to an entire nation—in fact, both to those who were present there at the moment, and to those who were not yet born! It’s that we didn’t see God. We heard God. For while the stone tablets that Moses brought down with him from the top of Mt. Sinai still are a visual wonder (don’t you love the way they take form in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie of The Ten Commandments?), it is the contents that matter, not their shape.

Set apart from all other commandments in the Torah, this list of rules stands iconic in more ways than one. On several occasions, individuals have tried placing a monument of the Ten Commandments either on courthouse lawns, public squares, and even in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building. Though these displays were declared to be in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—specifically the clause that is often interpreted to require separation for church and state—people haven’t stopped trying. 

What is it about these rules that make them so basic to our culture and civilization?

Maybe the answer lies in our genes: both our desire to believe in a supreme being and our need to get along with other members of our community are currently understood to be embedded in our DNA. The Ten Commandments pretty much symbolize, in tone and in content, both of these needs .

And yet, despite the clarity and forcefulness in which they are stated (actually twice—once in the book of Exodus, a second time in Deuteronomy), the Ten Commandments still leave room for interpretation. The commandment usually translated into English as “You shall not kill” actually states “You shall not murder.” The difference is essential to our understanding of this law today. What counts as “murder?” Is unintentional manslaughter murder? Is killing in self-defense murder? And how do you prove such cases? In these examples, the commandment is not an endpoint, but rather the beginning of the process that we call justice.

The 613 Commandments included in the Torah are understood to be God’s laws; yet few of them remain part of our legal system in their original form. “An eye for an eye,” often quoted by literalists, is no longer seen as valid punishment. Similarly, many other commandments that appear in the Torah have shown evolution and interpretation. 

The Jewish belief is that the Torah was given by God to human beings not only to uphold and observe, but also to serve as guidance for future cases. Our understanding of human psychology and diversity has enabled us to progress since the days of Hammurabi and even Moses. Our modern law system reflects humanity’s growth and maturation.

And yet, the Ten Commandments stand, fundamental, set in stone. 

What is it about these words? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that language is how God chose to reveal Godself to humanity. Visions and dreams were and still are common; but hearing God’s voice rising above the thunder and lightning, even beyond the sound of the great shofar that sounded at the time of this Revelation—a sound that is taught as having been heard around the world, hushing all other sounds including the chirping of birds and barking of dogs—that sort of “vision” of God must stand alone and separate among all other human experience. 

All the other Torahitic commandments were relayed to the Israelites by Moses. These Ten were spoken by God, directly and through no intercessor or agent. That, if nothing else, gives them extra validity.

As such, they deserve to be studied and understood as standing apart from all the other commandments. They are fundamental to all human morality, to every system of ethics, to every moral code that exists as part of human culture and existence. 

Judaism allows no visual representation of God. Much as we try to imagine it, we have no idea what God’s physical form might be. Yet what we have been granted is God’s words. It is by hearing and comprehending these words that we bring God’s presence—God’s holiness—into our life. In themselves, they are not God. But they do tell us what God wants of us, how God expects us to guide our steps, to chart our course through our daily life: With meaning, with dignity, with love, and with a sense of holiness.

© 2021 by Boaz D. Heilman