NOTES for Exo 20:1-26
The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, is the foundation of all Old Testament revelation. Revelation is the right word, although it is customary to think that what we have before us is only a moral code, even if one given by God Himself.
Meanwhile, the Decalogue begins with good news. How else can one understand God's words, "I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery"? This is precisely good news, news of liberation. This news is the first commandment, and the prohibition of pagan worship is only the consequence. After all, one cannot spiritually return to Egypt, from which God has led one out. That is what the Decalogue is for: so that one does not return there. A moral code alone is not enough for this. Not even because many of the norms of the Decalogue were already known before and were only confirmed by God. The issue is something else: morality, even the most correct morality, is generally insufficient for full spiritual life.
For full spiritual life one needs not morality or ethical conduct, but communion with God. The violation of a moral norm is terrible here not in itself, and not even because it can harm one's neighbor, although that too is sin, but because it sets up a wall between the violator and God, a wall that completely excludes communion with God until repentance. The commandments were given not simply as some kind of code, but as the description of a spiritual path, a path that leads to God, or a path that leads away from God when they are violated. The first commandment, for example, presupposes the second; the first simply cannot be kept without keeping the second, because paganism, unlike communion with the living God, is unthinkable without sacred images, which easily become idols.
The alternative to idols, both external and internal, is the invocation of God, provided, of course, that it does not turn into empty talk, when the name of God is present only on the tongue and not in the heart. And here we already have the third commandment, without which one cannot be free of idols, because then the image of the One that we ourselves draw in our soul will become an idol for us. Here too, in the fourth commandment, Shabbat appears as a day of silence, external and internal, as time spent alone with God; otherwise His name will not become the bridge that connects us with God.
On the other side stands the tenth commandment, to which the meaning of the second five is reduced: envy as the root of all other sins, as that which completely excludes not only love and joy, but even simply full life, the life one lives while remaining oneself and not trying to be anyone else whom God did not intend one to be. First comes envy, and then lies, theft, debauchery, and even murder. This is the path that leads away from God. It is no accident that the Bible speaks so often of two paths: the path of life and the path of death, the path that leads to God and the path that leads away from God. Both paths were shown to the people at Sinai, and now each person had to choose for himself, without shifting responsibility onto anyone else.