NOTES for Deu 5:1-33
No matter how the Torah changes throughout history, the commandments remain unchanged. They are the spiritual core of the Torah, without which it does not exist. At first glance, it may appear that there is hardly any sense here in speaking of spiritual tradition: the commandments of the Decalogue look most of all like an ordinary moral code, even if one given by God. Yet a more attentive consideration of the text makes clear that before us is not a simple listing of certain moral norms and prescriptions, but an internally whole text describing the spiritual path traveled by a person who goes to God and follows God.
The first commandment already presupposes not only refusal to participate in any pagan cults, but also a constant inner standing before God. The other commandments, the second, third, fourth, and partly the fifth, reveal what stands behind this divine call. Without observing them, it is impossible to stand before God, and therefore impossible to observe the first and chief commandment. The second part of the Decalogue is built in the same way, but here the matter concerns rather the path that leads away from God.
The chief commandment here is the tenth, which forbids envy, the envy that destroys the life of a person striving to get another person's house instead of building his own. Violation of this commandment, if one is consistent, will inevitably lead to violation of the other five that make up the second part of the Decalogue, if not by deed, then certainly by word and intention. Meanwhile, such a violation is spiritually no better than violation by deed: for God, intention and action are a single whole, and if an intention is not carried out only because no opportunity is provided for it, it can be considered realized.
This connection between intention and action is the essence of the Decalogue, making it not simply a moral code, but, of course with the corresponding spiritual effort, an inner spiritual and moral imperative that can determine a person's whole life, inner and outer. Then the Decalogue truly becomes revelation: the revelation of God's will and of God's word addressed to a specific person. Such a Decalogue can become, and truly does become, the spiritual core of the Torah for all times.