Ye Old 10 Commandments

The following is a guest post by fellow blogger Runolfr, who blogs here, among other places.

Fundamentalists are fond of claiming that the laws of the United States (or presumably any other western country they call home) are based upon the Biblical Ten Commandments. So, what are the Ten Commandments? You may be surprised.

The Ten Commandments are the orders from God that were inscribed onto stone tablets by Moses while he communed with God on Mount Sinai. Moses broke the first set of tablets when he descended from the mountain and found the Hebrews worshipping around the Golden Calf (Exodus 32), but he returned to Mount Sinai to reinscribe the tablets (Exodus 34), and only then do we learn what was actually written on them.

1. Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

2. Do not make cast idols.

3. Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt.

4. The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.

5. Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

6. Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year.

7. Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God.

8. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.

9. Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.

10. Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Exodus 34:28 specifically calls these instructions the Ten Commandments. Conspicuously absent from the list are some of the commands God shouted in Exodus 20 that fundamentalists are so obsessed with. The following commands are not part of the covenant between God and the Hebrews and are not among the Ten Commandments:

* Honor your father and your mother.
* You shall not murder.
* You shall not commit adultery.
* You shall not steal.
* You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
* You shall not covet.

The Ten Commandments include no rules for living peacefully and morally with other human beings; they are exclusively about worshipping God correctly, observing His holidays, performing rituals, offering sacrifices properly, and not using an especially inhumane method of cooking goats (who was doing that, anyway?). The reason for obeying the commands is also stated clearly: to earn God’s aid in an aggressive war of conquest.
For reference, from Exodus 34 (NIV):

1 The LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

10 Then the LORD said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you. 11
Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles. [a]
14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.

17 “Do not make cast idols.

18 “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt.

19 “The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons.
“No one is to appear before me empty-handed.

21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

22 “Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. [b]
23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God.

25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.

26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

27 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 28 Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.