NOTES for Exo 20:2-3

It is the very first commandment of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments of God given to Moses at Mount Sinai). The wise men of Israel said that all the Law is held in it, because all other commandments are only comments, explanation of the way we can fulfill this first commandment.

It may not be immediately understandable why it is so. In which way the commandments "don’t make an idol to yourself", "don’t kill ", not of talking about the prohibition "to seethe a kid in his mother's milk" ( Ex:23:19), do they explain the sense and the meaning of the commandments of the only God? There is a link here, but it is not very direct. It is necessary in the first place to understand what the fact that God exists, means for us. If He does not exist, man turns out then to be the only creator and the one defining the ways of this world. Man is then master of himself and criteria of correctness. We can remember the King of the Schwartz of the "ordinary miracle": he is for himself a king, an honorable pope, an honorable saint etc. Or, more seriously, with Dostoevsky: everything is allowed, if God does not exist.

Let us look now at what we shall have if God is not unique, and gods are many. In this case, they will inevitably turn out to be only "private", functional gods, having only a defined sphere of influence (god of the sea, god of the sun, god of the rain, god of a concrete tribe etc.). And man, being a being with universal needs, begins "to maneuver" between various gods, using their strengths and weaknesses in his interests, putting therefore himself on a step higher than each of these gods. If God is unique, then such a thing doesn’t occur: there is not strong and weak sides between which one could "jump" with the universal God. If God is unique, He is infallibly very much higher than man.

Why is the exodus of Egypt mentioned in this commandment? Even if God exists and He is unique, man has two ways of conduct accordingly if this God is good to man or not. If He is not good, then it will be necessary to avoid such a God as farthest as possible. But if He is good (and God manifests the example of his good action for men), then it will be necessary to approach Him, to seek for what He wants for us, what He considers good. And who can reveal to us what He considers good, if not Himself? And here then appear the other commandments, by which God describes His opinion on human righteousness. We see that without the acceptance of the first commandment, all the others have simply no meaning!

"You shall have no other gods besides Me" - what does this mean? And is it easy to avoid paganism for us, living in a country that presents itself partly as Orthodox, partly as Islamic, but certainly not as pagan? At first glance, everything is simple. Pagan cults like those that filled the ancient world and still permeate the life of some pagan countries are exotic for our country. Therefore, it would seem, there is no problem.

There probably really would be no problem if pagan worship necessarily required outward expression. But it, like every kind of worship, is born first of all in the soul, not in the stone, wood, or metal from which images of pagan gods are made. And the soul does not tolerate emptiness: abstaining from participation in pagan religious rites and ceremonies is not enough. An empty soul will still find an object of worship for itself, and that object will become its god. The only way to avoid this is to fill the soul, not with theology, morality, or even religion, but with that direct and immediate communion with God for which God intended it. Only then will there be no place for paganism in our life.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me” - what it means? Is it easy to avoid the paganism for us living in a world, which positions partially as Christian, partially as Islamic, but only not as heathen?

At first sight, everything looks simple. The heathen cults such as those by which was full the antique world and which penetrate up to here into the life of certain heathen countries, was for certain countries exoticism. Thus it was as if there was no problem. It would not really have been maybe if the heathen worship absolutely needed an outside expression. But it as any worship arises first of all from the soul, and not on stone, tree or metal, with which we make the images of the heathen gods.

And the soul does not tolerate emptiness: here only the abstinence from participating in religious rites and ceremonies of the heathen is little. An empty soul will always find an object of worship, which will become to him god. And the only possibility of avoiding it, is to fill the soul, to fill it not with theology, moral or even religion, but directly with the communion with God, to whom God has ordained it. Only like that there will be no place in our life for paganism.

The great Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) is also the Old Testament description of the love that God offers people. Love for God is unique, the first commandment; it cannot be replaced by anything, the second; it cannot be used for one's own interests, the third. It seeks the fulfillment of God's will, not one's own, the fourth. Love for God illumines, sanctifies, our relationships with other people, because they are dear to God. And in this, God is revealed as the source of fatherhood, the fifth commandment; life, the sixth; faithfulness, the seventh; possession, the eighth; justice, the ninth; and the ordering of the world, the tenth. In the New Testament the same thing was formulated in the Hymn to Love in chapter 13 of the First Letter to the Corinthians.

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.

The famous Ten Commandments, which became the symbol and foundation of Jewish and Christian ethics, actually serve as an introduction to a large body of laws and rules for life. Most of them are laws of social, clan, and family law, regulating relations between people at every level. It is entirely natural to call this biblical ethics, since the conduct of a member of God's people must be based on these rules.

But what is unusual and uncharacteristic of other peoples and cultures is that "human ethics" here is intertwined with ethics toward God. These are not ritual instructions, not lofty words about God, but precisely instructions about how to relate to God. He is the first subject and object of this ethics.

Therefore first look at God's faithfulness, then be faithful to God yourself, and then apply this faithfulness, for example, to your parents and to your wife. First remember how God delivered your people from slavery, and then do not create that slavery and oppression yourself: do not kill, do not steal, do not claim what belongs to another. Religion here becomes not simply the "ideological basis" of ethics, but its key, source, and model.

The Decalogue is known to everyone who has read the Bible even once in life, and many who have never read it know or at least have heard something about the Ten Commandments. It is the only part of the Torah that for the overwhelming majority of Christians today is truly relevant: most Christians today look at Old Testament law, whether civil law or cultic law, as something that has no direct relation to them. This perception is explained in large part by the fact that these laws appear irrelevant to Christians today, first because, as people usually say in such cases, "Christ fulfilled everything for us," and second because the laws we find in the Torah, whether in the book of Exodus, the book of Leviticus, or the book of Deuteronomy, were given by God for another age and today seem completely inapplicable.

Meanwhile, much here depends on how we perceive the Torah as a whole and the Decalogue in particular. The Decalogue is not simply a moral code in which the order of prescriptions and prohibitions has no significance; it is an integral literary composition in which each commandment occupies its own strictly defined place, outside of which it loses, if not all its meaning, then a significant part of it. Indeed, if we look at the first part of the Decalogue, the first five commandments, it is not hard to see that the first commandment is the main one here, not because it forbids paganism, but because it speaks of God, before whom a person stands and who can and must become the center and meaning of that person's life. The other commandments among the first five are given as means for solving this spiritual task. To exclude from life everything that blocks God from view by claiming His place in a person's soul and heart (the second commandment); to make prayer not a formality, but real, full communion with God (the third commandment); to learn to spend time with God (the fourth commandment); finally, to add to communion with God full and respectful communion with neighbors, while avoiding every form of worship of human beings and human traditions (the fifth commandment): this is the path offered by the first part of the Decalogue.

Its second part describes another path, a path leading away from God, a path by which a person spiritually and practically destroys himself, his relationship with God, and his relationship with neighbors. Here, in the second set of five commandments, the fifth is the main one, or the tenth if we take the whole Decalogue together: it forbids envy, forbids desiring "your neighbor's house," desiring his world, his spiritual space, which God gives him and from which the envious person wants to push him out. The violation of each following commandment, leading to lying and slander, theft, sexual immorality, and finally murder, is only the logic of this displacement carried through to the end.

Thus the Decalogue already marks out two paths: the path of life and the path of death, between which a person must make his choice. And the whole Torah also places a person before this choice, because one must choose not "in principle" and not "in general," but in concrete situations; and the laws we find in the Old Testament books describe the typical situations in which each of us, one way or another, finds himself in life. Understood in this way, the Torah can become for us, in the words of the apostle Paul, a "guardian leading us to Christ," to whom we think we have come and no longer need guides, but after whom we will have to keep reaching and whom we will have to keep catching up to until His return in glory.