A CRITICAL LOOK OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FROM THE BOOK OF EXODUS
EXODUS 20 My Comments in Red
New International Version
And God spoke all these words:
The text is clear that these
are the words of God. If it were man saying this we would take it as man's
words. But liberal Christians are so disobedient they pretend that when God is
described as using words that it is not literally saying they are his words!
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of
slavery. God is starting the commandments by identifying himself.
3 “You shall have no other gods before me. You must not worship or value
anything more than God or as much.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven
above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. This is a command in
itself. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your
God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the
third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a
thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
This is plainly another commandment. It commands you to obey or suffer punishment. So the commandment demands that you believe in a punishing God. You are also expected to love him not by keeping his commandments. It is love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not have any other
gods is taken to ban merely worshiping other gods. But it could mean you must
not tolerate any statues of those gods or their temples. The commandment must be
interpreted in context and it appears in holy books which stress the need to
destroy God’s children who turn to other gods and to destroy the idols and
places of worship. It is therefore an intolerant precept.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not
hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and
do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On
it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your
male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your
towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and
all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord
blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
This command says you must not
do any work or even get a pagan slave to do it for you. The reason for the rest
is how God made all things in six days and rested on the seventh. The
commandment says the Genesis story is literal. It also commands you to work six
days. No sane person thinks Genesis is true. Those who say it is not
literal are as mad as those who say it is literal for both still say it is true
and the story gives no hint of being non-literal. The detail in it in a
time when people had no time to read or source books or work out the meaning if
the meaning is a bit obscure shows it is indeed meant to be taken literally.
The Ten Commandments command a literal interpretation of the Bible. They
are meant to be learned as the words of God. Liberals with their lies try
to make things more complicated but they care about avoiding embarrassment and
being seen as crazy and not about the truth. The truth is that the Bible
except where it clearly states otherwise is to be taken literally.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the
Lord your God is giving you.
The commandment promises a long
life on earth. God's promise is no good for lots of good sons and
daughters die. A promise is a promise and you cannot use the excuse, "They
had to die for a reason." God uses that excuse or rather men invent God
and then make excuses for why their invention does not act or keep his promises.
It's disgraceful.
13 “You shall not murder. Banning murder does not necessarily mean banning all
killing. In the past, capital punishment was not consider murdered by law.
Murder refers not to killing
but to illegal killing. In Hebrew the word for murder here is razach which
refers to killing from anti-social motives. It has nothing then to do with wars
and executions that are sanctioned by God or the Israelite community in
accordance with the capital punishment laws.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
The Church stretches the commandment say against
adultery beyond all logic. It says it forbids sexy fantasies and sex before
marriage. A whole list of sexual sins is condemned aside from adultery! The
commandment should read, "You shall confine sex to marriage". The Church shows
no logic at all. The close relationship between religion and self-inflicted
psychosis is evident when it reads texts and takes such outlandish
interpretations and is immune to correction. Jesus stretched the
commandment to include a ban on sex fantasies about other men's wives. He
either forgot there was a do not covet commandment for that anyway or did not
realise that the commandments are a public code not a private one. The
state cannot punish you for what you think and neither do the commandments.
Covet probably refers then to actions taken to get somebody else's property.
The stretching started with Jesus who went as far as to say that divorcing is
causing adultery and is adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
As false testimony is supposedly stealing somebody's
good name why is the Church not able to derive the ban on slander from, "You
shall not steal"?
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your
neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything
that belongs to your neighbor.”
This commandment forbids thoughts that wish to take
from or hurt another person. The rule against coveting another man’s wife
is about the injustice of trying to take a man’s marriage away from him. If it
means he owns his wife that is shocking. And it does mean that.
Jesus did nothing to fix the male centred point of view when he referred to such
commandments. He just directed people to the commandments.
18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw
the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance
19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will
listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so
that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”
21 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness
where God was.
22 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites this: ‘You have seen for
yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: 23 Do not make any gods to be
alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold.
God rules out the liberal view
that as long as you spare some worship for God idolatry is fine. This excuse is
used by Protestants who are ecumenically minded. They want to excuse Catholics
worshipping a communion wafer. God confirms that he has literally spoken.
24 “‘Make an altar of earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and
fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle. Wherever I cause my
name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. 25 If you make an altar of
stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if
you use a tool on it. 26 And do not go up to my altar on steps, or your private
parts may be exposed.’
The book Christianity is Not Great tells us that "No
commandment to do good appears in the Ten Commandments of Moses." Religion says
that sometimes it is easier to tell people what is not good than what is good.
But you would expect a command to give alms or something. There is nothing. Why
do we have, "You shall not commit adultery" when we could have, "You shall have
relations in love only with your husband or wife"? That is a better way to put
it and clearer and more encouraging.
There are no decent commandments! Why not, "You shall
not wage war!"? Why not, "You shall not enslave your fellow person but see all
people as your equal"?
EXODUS 34
If we have two sets of ten commandments and one does not agree with the other then you have to take the latter one as the one that is in force. We have Exodus 34 which gives us, apart from three, different commandments altogether including instructions about animal sacrifice and keeping festivals. Christianity is apostate for it is obvious that it was meant to keep Jewish and it didn't.
FROM THE JESUS DELUSION BY HEINZ-WERNER KUBITZA
The first four commandments were all concerned
exclusively with the correct way to honor God and the avoidance of foreign
cults. A waste of space, if one remembers that we want to formulate only Ten
Commandments (in imitation of the number of fingers). But now come separate
instructions, the first of which is to honor one’s parents. That this
commandment is given such a prominent position is surprising. Should we not have
expected a ban on killing to come first? Furthermore, in our society honoring
parents is not a law demanding court action, but at best a show of decency and
gratitude toward those to whom we owe our life and who have reared us. It is
done voluntarily, not because one hopes to gain a long life from the act, as is
dubiously justified by this commandment. In no way should we make this
commandment a foundation for some sort of family policy. The status of parents
in old Israel gave them not only the right to inflict corporal punishment but
also the right to kill, if necessary, a refractory son or daughter. So this
verse, which sounds so positive, also has its perils. It is only suitable to a
limited extent for the instruction of children and adolescents, for example.
Love of one’s neighbor, yes – but better not dependent on the belief in a God,
but rather on a feeling of solidarity with all fellow men. Or, as Lessing
expressed the wish, doing good for the sake of good. Lessing’s concept is
superior to a derivation from religion.
JESUS AND THE TWO GREAT COMMANDMENTS
The ten commandments are in two parts. First section is God and the second section is neighbour. The commandments start off with God. You must have only the one true God and then a condemnation appears of using the sun or statues as images of God (or gods) that you can worship like him. Protestants treat that as the one commandment and Catholics divide it into two. Then you are not to take God's name in vain. Then you have to reserve the sabbath for worship. The rest of the commandments are about how to treat your neighbour.
When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandments he gave two. One to love God alone and totally. And the other to love as in serve your neighbour as yourself. Nobody feels he meant you must love as in good feelings. His culture meant serve by love. These two commandments are actually a summary of the ten. The command about God refers to the God section of the ten. The command about neighbour is the neighbour section.
They are the greatest commandments as in summary and it is not downgrading any other commandments. God is not going to give you a command and then let you undermine it by saying it is not the core commandment. This is the answer to those who say that if you are living with somebody else's spouse or are actively LGBT the commandment to love matters most not the one against adultery, a collective term in the commandment for sexual acts out of wedlock. If one is sleeping around one is open to adultery for one knows some of the partners will be pretending to be single. That is why adultery covers it.
Jesus was not authorised by anybody to speak for Judaism and worked outside the theological regularity system of the religion. He had no right to take the commandments and try to claim them. Christianity definitely is guilty, amid its active and passive anti-Semitic activities, of stealing them and owning them. It even wants to put them up on posters in schools.
