The purpose of the First Commandment

The previous article explained that the primary audience of the Ten Commandments was the elders or government leaders of Israel. It was for national governance, not personal piety. The big Ten Words or ideas primarily defined the government’s authority and responsibility, and what it would be punished for violating.

Often religious commentaries explain that the first four commandments (sometimes called the first table) were about worship of God, and the next six about relationships with others. Indeed, it is instructive for such things, but it is not how the Decalogue is organized. Later the Bible says it was written on two tablets which meant there was a duplicate, with all ten statements on each. As in ancient treaty documents of that time, one copy of a covenant document was given to both parties of the treaty.

The First Commandment or principle for good governance was in Exodus 20:3: “You [i.e. the governing elders or government] shall have no other gods before me.” Although it may seem that it relates to worship, it is not. In effect it meant one God, one law. A god in the ancient world was the source of right and wrong, of morality. And since it is addressed to the governing elders or government of Israel, it is especially about national law, not private morality.

The concept of divine kingship where the king was god, was dominant in the ancient world, in Egypt where the Jews were slaves for centuries, but also in Caananite religions such as Moloch. The state claimed total jurisdiction over man and this in effect is the state claiming to be as god. This is true of modern socialist states as well as the ancient systems, they just no longer use the term “god” as the ancient kings did. In Israel, laws against witchcraft and divination, false prophets, etc were capital crimes because they were considered as efforts to replace Jehovah as the source of law and therefore punished as treason, not as contrary a violation of religious belief (Dt 13 has no penalty for unbelief or heresy).

The Elders of Israel understood the first commandment this way: “Your government shall have no other sources of law [i.e. worldviews] above Jehovah.” The Hebrew word “before” indicated priority. It meant no other powers before or independent of Jehovah. Of course, other private gods and ideas of right and wrong would always exist among the citizens, but the first job of their government was to make one law supreme – that which was determined by Jehovah. When it came to their legal system, no contrary ideas of right and wrong would be allowed in their system of justice. Individual citizens may believe differently but the state would be consistent in their laws.

This did not require the elders and the citizens to worship Jehovah, and indeed in subsequent case laws there was never any evidence of punishment for private worship of another god (nor for atheism). This was only about establishing the supreme source of law and justice that the government was to recognize exclusively.

In the ancient world most nations recognized in their laws diverse and conflicting ideas of morality because of their embrace of multiple gods. Rulers would exalt certain gods and their priests and practices if the ruler seemed to get benefits and powers (especially dynastic control) from doing so. Polytheism was a tool for corruption by those in power. At the very least, polytheism produced legal confusion and inconsistency in application of law, and thus injustice.

But it was more. Robert Ingram writes in The World Under God’s Law that the first commandment was a proscription of statism and totalitarianism. Jehovah was telling the government leaders of Israel that they would not be allowed to manipulate power and ensconce themselves in state positions by picking and choosing the “gods” they liked. There would be only one source of law and that was the one coming from the God named Jehovah.

In the first commandment Jehovah goes out of the way to define Himself. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of…bondage.” He identified himself as the God of the Exodus – the God who they knew as Liberator from slavery under the pagan government of Egypt that abused its power in the name of its multiple gods. Jehovah self-identifies with freedom and justice. So, if there is to be only one supreme source of law, the God of Israel was the best one to have.

So, in general the First Commandment was not about requirements for religion or worship, rather about establishing the Rule of Law that was consistent and just. Increasingly in modern nations, law is again relativistic, diverse, and contradictory. Conflicting ideas of morality compete for ascendancy when it comes to such things as life, sexuality, marriage, property, and other matters. One nation or state says abortion is wrong and against the law, and another says it a constitutional right.

The best model of government is one where the governing leaders shall not recognize contrary sources of law; or as Exodus 20 stated it: “no other gods before me [i.e., Jehovah].” Ingram says: “The First Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution) was, in fact, and is, a paraphrase of the First Commandment given to Moses. ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’”