The first commandment instructs the people to “have no other gods.”25 Their humanity is directly connected to their ability to remember their liberation, which was a gift from God. If they forget God—the one, true God who freed them—they are at that very same moment forgetting their story. If they forget their story, they might forget what it was like to be slaves, and they might find themselves back in a new sort of slavery.
The second commandment builds on the first, prohibiting any “image in the form of anything.”26 In the ancient Near East, people conceptualized their many gods using images. They made statues and carvings and idols as physical representations of the divine beings they believed controlled their fate. A statue or carving gives shape and size and depth to the divine. An idol helped people understand just who their god was and what their god was like.
But this exodus God is different. This God is inviting these people to be priests, to show the world what this God is like through their lives. This God doesn’t need images in the form of wood or stone or marble, because this God has people.
This God is looking for a body.
The command about idols and images leads to the third commandment, the prohibition not to “misuse the name of the LORD your God.”27 The Hebrew word for “misuse” here can also be translated “carry.”28 God has redeemed these former slaves and is now inviting them to be representatives in the world of this redemption and the God who made it happen. They are how the world will know who this God is. God’s reputation is going to depend on them and how they “carry” God’s name. The command is certainly about the words a person speaks. But at its heart it is far more about how Israel carries itself as those who carry the name of God. Will it act on behalf of the poor and oppressed? Because that is how this God acts.
The fourth commandment is to take a Sabbath, a day each week, and not do any work.29 In Egypt, they worked every day without a break, being treated as objects to be exploited, not people.30 The Sabbath is the command to take a day a week to remind themselves that they aren’t in Egypt anymore, that their value doesn’t come from how many bricks they produce. Their significance comes from the God who rescued them, the God who loves them.
The Ten Commandments are a new way to be human, a new way to live and move in the world, in covenant with the God who hears the cry of the oppressed and liberates them.
Everything about the rest of the commandments speaks to this newfound liberation. God is inviting, God is looking, God is searching for a body, a group of people to be the body of God in the world.
Following the Ten Commandments are all sorts of laws and commands about how to live in this new way.31 The Israelites are told not to charge interest. “If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can your neighbor sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”32
Do you hear the echoes of Egypt in the command? If they begin to oppress on an individual basis, God says that when the oppressed cry out, “I will hear.” The warning is sharp here: don’t become another Pharaoh, because God acts against people like Pharaoh.
They’re commanded, “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. . . . Do not deny justice to your poor people.”33
And God continually warns, “If you do [any of this] and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry.”34
It’s as if God is saying, “The thing that has happened to you—go make it happen for others. The freedom from oppression that you are now experiencing—help others experience that same freedom. The grace that has been extended to you when you were at your lowest—extend it to others. In the same way that I heard your cry, go and hear the cry of others and act on their behalf.”
God measures their faith by how they treat the widows, orphans, strangers—the weak—among them. God’s desire is that they would bring exodus to the weak, in the same way that God brought them exodus in their weakness.
God’s words to the people through Moses begin with “if you obey me fully.”35
It’s an invitation, an opportunity,
but it’s a giant if, isn’t it?
“If you obey me fully.”
Which raises the question, Did they?
Were they true to the covenant? How did they respond to the invitation?
We started with Egypt, we then went to Sinai, but to answer the “if” question, we now need to go to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem
Generations later, the descendants of these wandering slaves have settled into the land they were promised. Their great king David has secured their borders, the land and people are experiencing peace, and David’s son Solomon comes to power. Solomon is brilliant and wise and wealthy, and Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom, begins to gain a global reputation. A queen from the land of Sheba comes to visit Solomon.36 She’s from far away, from a different land, from a different kind of people, with a different religion. And she wants to know more about these people and their king and their God in Jerusalem.
Wasn’t this what Sinai was all about?
God was looking for a body, a nation to show the world just who God is and what God is like. And now it’s happening: foreigners from the corners of the earth are coming to ask questions and learn about just who this God is.
Sheba tests Solomon with hard questions,
she eats meals with him, she watches him worship his God at the temple, she gets a tour of his palace and all that he has built and acquired with his wealth, and after surveying his kingdom, she says, “Because of the LORD’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.”37
Notice that she doesn’t say he is maintaining justice and righteousness—only that there can be only one reason why he has received so much blessing from God.
And what does she mean by “justice and righteousness”?
Freedom, liberation from violence, protection from anything dehumanizing. She understands that God has given all of this wealth and power and influence so that Solomon would use it on behalf of those who are poor, weak, and suffering from injustice.
What impresses her most about this God of Solomon’s is that this God is the God of the oppressed. This “pagan” queen from a foreign land understands what God is up to with these Jewish people living in Jerusalem.38
Sheba gets it.
So what did Solomon do with his wealth and power and influence? What kind of kingdom did he build? Did he maintain justice and righteousness with his vast resources?
Because it can go one of two ways in Jerusalem, can’t it?
Solomon, like us, can use his power and wealth to do something about the cry of the oppressed, or he can turn a deaf ear.
The Bible tells the story: “Here is the account of the forced labor King Solomon conscripted to build the LORD’s temple, his