Exodus 20:16

God spoke these words himself at Sinai (Exodus 20:1), amid the thunder and smoke of the mountain (Exodus 19), to a people he had just brought out of slavery in Egypt. He had taken them as his own and called them to be “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). The commandments are the terms of that covenant, and the laws that follow in Exodus 21–23 apply them to particular cases.

The first four commandments (Exodus 20:1–11) concern the LORD himself: the worship of him alone, the ban on idols, the reverent use of his name, and the Sabbath. The last six concern the people around us. They begin in the home and move through a neighbour’s life, marriage, property and reputation, and then they turn inward to the heart. Honour for parents stands first, because the family is where a person first learns to respect the authority God has set over him. Murder, adultery, theft and false witness are deeds that others can see and judge. Coveting happens inside, and it is the desire that so often leads to the others.

Each command speaks to “thou”, one person at a time, so every member of the people is answerable for keeping it. The commands are also very short. In Hebrew “Thou shalt not kill” is two words, lo tirtzach, and the commands against adultery and theft are just as brief (lo’ tin’af and lo’ tignōv). They set plain limits that anyone can remember, and they carry the authority of God himself.

The verb for honour, kâbad, comes from a root meaning to be heavy or weighty. To honour father and mother is to give them weight: to esteem them, to respect the place God has given them, to be grateful for their care, to support them, and to guard their dignity and good name. Its opposite is to treat them lightly. Proverbs sets both sides together: “Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old” (Proverbs 23:22). Moses gives the command again, in the same words, in Deuteronomy 5:16.

The command holds for the whole of life. A child honours father and mother by obeying them, and grown sons and daughters honour them with respect, practical help and provision, above all as they grow old.

The word for father, ʼâb, can also mean a chief or a forefather, and here it names the man at the head of the household. The word for mother is ʼêm. God names the mother beside the father, so both parents are owed the same honour, and her care, wisdom and authority in the home are honoured as his are.

The verb nâʼaph means to commit adultery: sexual union between a married person and someone other than their spouse. It names a breach of the marriage covenant and a betrayal of trust. The command guards the bond God made at creation: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Marriage as God designed it is a lifelong union of one man and one woman, and its faithfulness mirrors his own faithfulness to his people. So adultery wrongs God as well as a husband or wife: “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4).

In Israel marriage carried the family line and the inheritance of property, so adultery threw doubt on who a child’s father was, unsettled the inheritance, and broke the trust a whole community rests on. The law punished it with death for both the man and the woman (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22). Proverbs warns that “whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul” (Proverbs 6:32–33), and Malachi rebukes husbands who dealt treacherously with the wife of their youth (Malachi 2:14–16). In one way of numbering the commandments this one is counted as the sixth.

The verb gânab means to thieve, to take something by stealth, secretly, without the owner’s knowledge or consent, and by extension to deceive. It covers taking by fraud as well as by stealth. The law uses it for the worst theft of all, the stealing of a person: “he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 21:16). Deuteronomy also makes kidnapping a person to sell him a capital crime (Deuteronomy 24:7).

In Israel a family’s land, livestock and goods were its living, so to steal from a neighbour struck at his security and sometimes at his survival. The command protects what rightly belongs to another and the fruit of his work. Since God owns all things, what we hold is a stewardship under him, and theft wrongs him as well as our neighbour. It grasps by our own hand what God has given to someone else, which is a failure to trust his provision. The law sets theft beside lying and deceit: “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another” (Leviticus 19:11). Proverbs carries it into trade: “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1).

The same command reaches every way of taking what is another’s: fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, dishonest business, passing off another person’s work as one’s own, and misusing an employer’s time or goods.

Paul gives the thief a new way to live: “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Ephesians 4:28). Jesus warned against laying up treasure on earth, “where thieves break through and steal”, and taught his people to lay up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19–21). In his own coming he showed the opposite of theft: “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

The verb ʻânâh means to answer or respond, and here to testify, to give evidence. The word for false, sheqer, means a falsehood, a lie, a deception or a sham. So the command forbids testimony that is a lie against one’s neighbour, rêaʻ, a word for an associate, companion, friend or fellow, which Strong’s derives from a verb meaning to associate with as a friend. It takes in anyone a person lives and deals with.

The verb châmad means to delight in or to desire. It can name a good desire, as when the psalmist says of the judgments of the LORD, “More to be desired are they than gold” (Psalm 19:10). Here it is the longing to have what belongs to someone else, a desire that reaches for what is his and leaves us discontented with our own lot.

The list begins with the neighbour’s house, bayith, a word for the whole household: the dwelling, the people in it and all that belongs to it. To covet his house is to want his whole life and security. Then comes his wife, named apart from his goods, which marks her own place in the home, and desiring her is the inward beginning of the adultery forbidden in Exodus 20:14. Then come his manservant and maidservant, who did the household’s work, his ox for ploughing and his ass for carrying. The command closes with “any thing that is thy neighbour’s”, which brings every possession of his within its reach.

Every one of these six commandments is a way of loving a neighbour. The law already said, “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), and Jesus named this the second great commandment (Matthew 22:39). Paul lists these very commands and gathers them into that one saying: “For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8–10). Love keeps the commandments from the inside. It honours parents, guards life, keeps faith, deals honestly, speaks truly and is glad of a neighbour’s good.

Jesus kept these commandments perfectly. He honoured his Father in everything: “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). He honoured his earthly parents too, going down to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph “and was subject unto them” (Luke 2:51). He bore true witness to the Father even when it led to his suffering and death, and he went to the cross condemned by false witnesses, the innocent “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He laid down his life as a sacrifice for sinners, for murder and hatred, adultery and lust, theft and covetousness alike, and in his coming he gave where others take.

Through him God makes those who receive him his own children: “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). His Spirit renews the heart these commandments search, so that his people learn to love as he loved. The promise of long days attached to the fifth commandment reaches its end in him, in the new heaven and new earth. These six commands show us a God who cares for the home, for every human life, for faithfulness, honesty and truth, and for the desires that are hidden from everyone but him.