NOTES for Exo 20:1-20
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.