Ten Commandments Part 2
Historical
background
The Ten Commandments were first given in a time much
like today. The known world was
experiencing disruption, chaos and great destruction. There was a great migration of people groups
into the Middle East around 1200 BC.
Some of these groups, like the Sea Peoples, were warlike. The existing populace was either killed,
forced out of their homelands, or assimilated into the newer people
groups. The global trade of goods ceased
due to disruption of the sea trade, coupled with extended drought and famine
throughout the Middle East.
Civilization
after civilization was destroyed, never to arise again. The Minoan civilization on Crete had been destroyed
in the preceding century. The Mycenaean
civilization of Greece which took over Minoans was destroyed in both Greece and
Crete. Egypt barely survived the
invasion of the Sea Peoples, but was so weakened that it had no influence in
the Middle East for the next three hundred years. The vast Hittite civilization
in Turkey was so thoroughly destroyed that in the late 1800s people laughed at
the Bible because it mentioned Hittites, as they were thought to have been a
nonexistent people. Then in the late
1800s the ancient capital city of the Hittites was discovered along with
Hittite literature. From this we have learned that the book of Deuteronomy follows
the structure of a Hittite Law code. God’s
covenant with Israel was something people would have understood because it was
based on this structure. In Syria, the city of Ugarit was leveled, not to be
rediscovered until 1929 when a farmer, plowing his fields, broke into a tomb. Underneath
his fields there was a large city, with an extensive library of texts that have
greatly helped us understand the meaning of several of the words in the Hebrew
Bible that occur only once.
Life,
in the Middle East at this time, was totally unpredictable. In the midst of this God stepped in and gave
the Ten Commandments to Israel. They are
a part of the covenant code which God established with Israel (Exodus 21:1 –
23:19). It defined their relationship,
God saying “I will be your God and you will be my people”
The Ten Commandments, and the Covenant of which they are a part, became
a rallying
point to a
world gone awry. In them we see God’s search
for man. His love is so strong that he
desires for us to flourish, not only in our relationship with Him, but also
with each other.
The Ten Commandments were given to a people who had
spent several centuries as slaves, told how to live and what to do. Now the question being asked is: How do a people, freed from slavery, live
peaceably in society? It is the same
question that could have been asked following the end of the Civil War. How can a people, suddenly freed and on their
own, live together in their freedom? The
covenant gives us God’s instructions of how to live in community and how to
flourish in so doing. Ten Commandments set
rules that governed the new Israelite society.
They established the conditions necessary for a free, loving, and just
community of God’s people to develop and flourish. This is a key point. The context of the Ten Commandments is seen
in relationships – with God, with neighbor.
Pope John Paul II writing on the subject of freedom and law says “God’s
law does not reduce, much less do away with human freedom; rather it protects
and promotes that freedom.”[1] Charles Chaput, in an article in First Things
notes that “We find true freedom only as we’re liberated from our vices so that
we not only desire what is truly good, but also act to attain it.”[2] We don’t have to be enslaved to addictions of
any kind.
These two quotes well illustrate the aim of the Ten
Commandments. They are to free us from
enslavement to our passions so we can flourish as a community of persons. God
is a God who liberates. He desires that
we live freely in society. He desires
that we live in personal freedom, not enslaved to anything. The Ten Commandments are a simple, elegant
statement of what makes society good.
Tradition holds
that the first tablet deals with our relationship with God and the second with
our relationship with each other. They contain both vertical relationship with
God and horizontal relationship with neighbor. These relationships are extremely important. To illustrate, if I have a relationship with
God which tells me how to live, and I know you have the same relationship with
Him, it gives predictability to how we will interact with each other. We can better expect how each other will
react to the situations we face in life.
Jesus
speaks to both these vertical and horizontal relationships when asked what is
the greatest commandment (Mk 12:29-31).
He says to “love the Lord (vertical) and love your neighbor (horizontal). Notice that the common word between the
vertical and horizontal dimensions: Love.
The Ten
Commandments give predictability to a world in decline. In them we see God’s mercy at work, reaching
out to mankind. It is interesting that
in the life of the Church the Ten Commandments have been most looked up to in
times of chaos. It may be that we will
see this again in our days, despite society’s efforts to do away with them.
Next week we will examine several aspects of the Ten
Commandments.
Food for
thought
1. Have you ever
thought of the Ten Commandments as helping make life predictable?
2. How can the
Ten Commandments help free us from enslavement to our inappropriate passions?
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