Exodus 20
The ten words
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And God spoke all these words, saying:
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I am Yahweh thy God that brought thee forth from the land of Egypt, from the house of servants;
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no other gods shall there be to thee before1 my face.
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No making unto thee2 a carving and any likeness that is in the heavens above, and that is in the land beneath, and that is in the waters beneath the land;
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no prostrating thyself unto them and no serving them, ‹in› that I, Yahweh thy god, am a zealous god, visiting the wrongdoing of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and upon the fourth unto those hating me,
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and doing hesed3 unto thousands, unto those loving me and guarding4 my commands.
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No bearing thou the name of Yahweh thy god for emptiness,5 ‹in› that Yahweh shall not clear him that beareth his name for emptiness.
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Remember thou the sabbath day, to hallow it;
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six days servest thou, and doest all thy work,
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and the seventh day is a sabbath unto Yahweh thy god; no doing any work, thou and thy son and thy daughter, thy ‹he›-servant6 and thy she-slave and thy beast and thy sojourner that is in thy gates—
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‹in› that in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the land, the sea and all that is in them, and rested in the seventh day; upon-so Yahweh blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
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Give weight7 to thy father and thy mother, to the end that thy days may be long upon the ground8 that Yahweh thy god giveth to thee.
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No killing thou.
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No adultering thou.
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No stealing thou.
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No answering thou against thy comrade9 a false testimony.
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No desiring thou thy comrade’s house; no desiring thou thy comrade’s woman, and his he-servant and his she-slave and his ox and his donkey and aught that is thy comrade’s.10
Footnotes
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before. Or “beside.” Al generally means upon (and thus also over and above), but often carries a sense of general proximity. ↩
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No making unto thee. The majority of the ten words begin in Hebrew with a negation: lo. This is agreeably rendered by almost the same word in English: no. I believe it is important to preserve this emphatic cadence, but it is not without cost: the verb must now become a participle. ↩
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hesed. I leave this untranslated as there is no suitable English word for it. I believe we need to incorporate it into English, rather than thin it down with inadequate representations like “loyal love” (LEB), “mercy” (KJV, NKJV), “kindness” (YLT), “lovingkindness” (ASV, NASB, LSB), or “covenant faithfulness” (NET). In my view, the NET hits closest to the meaning of hesed, which is really not about love or kindness, as we typically conceive of these in English, but rather a devotion or commitment to treat someone faithfully, on the basis of a prior bond. ↩
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guarding. Or “observing.” I translate shamar as guard because it is the one English word that can be used in pretty much every case, but we should be attentive to how in scripture it connotes a careful watching over something. The head of the word is Genesis 2:15, where Adam is commanded to serve and guard (watch over, keep) the garden. ↩
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No bearing…for emptiness. The traditional translation of “taking” Yahweh’s name “in vain” is perplexing. The name is not “taken” by the Hebrews; it is given to them. Because they are God’s son (Ex 4:23), they bear God’s name; the same word used of carrying objects. They represent him in the world; therefore, they must represent him well, expressing in their lives the substance of his identity and the weight it deserves. The command is not primarily about how the word Yahweh is used in speech, but how the “Yahweh identity” is expressed through his people’s lives. That certainly includes using his name with respect, not making shallow or false vows and the like; but also much more besides. This is all entirely lost in the traditional translation. ↩
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he-servant. I generally translate eved simply as servant, but it is a masculine noun, and here is set against the feminine amah, which means a specifically female slave. ↩
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Give weight. The traditional rendering, “honor,” is another case of translators heavily over-specifying a general word in an effort to explain the text rather than represent it. Khavad refers to weight; its head is Genesis 12:10 where the famine “weighed” upon the land; and afterward we read that Abraham was “weighty” in assets (Gen 13:2). In Genesis 18:20 the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is very “weighty.” Glory is weightiness, and we ought not to make it light and abstract by divorcing it from its concrete linguistic root in scripture. ↩
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ground. Not erets, land (trad. “earth”), but adamah, ground. ↩
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comrade. The traditional translation of rea as neighbor is not wrong, but the term has much broader denotation in Hebrew, and can be used of anyone from a man you happen to be serving with (e.g., Jdg 7:13) to a lover (e.g. Song 1:9). No single English word perfectly captures such a range, but comrade comes pretty close. Let us empty it of communist connotations and fill it with biblical ones. ↩
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No desiring thou…thy comrade’s. There is a trade-off here between cadence and word order. In the Hebrew, it is literally, “No desiring thou the house of thy comrade; no desiring thou the woman of thy comrade.” However, keeping this word order intact comes at the cost of adding two extra words in English: “of” and “the.” This has the effect of making the sentence much longer, and losing the compact terseness exemplified in the Hebrew. It seems to me better to retain some of the cadence of the original text. ↩