Word to the Wise
Friday, July 24, 2009 - Friday in the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Exodus 20:1-17 and Matthew 13:18-23]In those days: God delivered all these commandments.....
In reading the Ten Commandments in the first scripture today from Exodus, it occurred to me that I didn't learn them in the words of the original (certainly not in Hebrew nor even in the translation used in the liturgy today). The lengthy first commandment about idolatry was "edited"- probably to make it easier for folks to remember and perhaps to remove the disputed issue of God's punishment for generations. The second, third, fourth and tenth commandments have been similarly edited! Lest we think this is something that happened only in our times, we should "fast forward" in the Bible to Deuteronomy 5:6-22 and see the "rendition" of the Ten Commandments given there. We should also remember that the "Ten" is not a word that occurs in connection with the commandments anywhere in the Bible! In fact, some Christian traditional lists had eleven! We might also wonder why the two stone tablets on which these commandments were written (Cecil B. DeMille anticipated lasers in his depiction of this!) are often shown with Roman numerals on them!!!! All of this is meant to call attention to what we humans have done to a document of faith and morals that is the bedrock of our civil life, despite the continual ACLU lawsuits to remove any trace of their origin from courthouses or other public forums in this country! In some ways, the current secular attitude and moral conduct has whittled down this great moral and religious document to be the Ten Suggestions! Even those of us who embrace these commandments as a matter of faith and not just convenience would probably add "except" or "unless" at the end of many if not all of them! If the choice came to deciding whether to scrap the Ten Commandments altogether because of all the "exceptions" we can dream of OR to recover them by getting rid of all the exceptions we can dream of, I would choose the latter without hesitation. The appearance of the Ten Commandments in our liturgical scripture, in whatever translation or edition, is a reminder to us that these are not simply rules for insuring a polite society but are God's commandments for a human race that has resisted commandments ever since the Garden of Eden! Ignoring or disobeying these commandments has brought disaster generation after generation! AMEN
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