The Decalogue, given to those out of Egypt, is not just for those in Israel
On the Common Sense of the Decalogue
The Decalogue is viewed as a common Word, claimed by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But many of the prescriptions of the Decalogue are not exclusive rights of the Decalogue. Cultures far beyond the Ancient Near East talked about having filial piety, or respecting that which belongs to one’s neighbor, or not murdering. Defenses of marital fidelity aren’t exclusive property to monotheists.
How this comes to be has been variously described by evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and economists as the product of self-defensive mechanisms, the drive toward perpetuating the species, that which is essential to a functioning economy. I’m not opposed to these readings, though they have in common only being able to make sense of the Decalogue’s second table for the most part. For example, there’s an argument to be made for the Sabbath—as a form of rest or natural rhythm within an agrarian society—as a natural feature of healthy societies.
One could argue that the Decalogue is intrinsic to the natural law, appropriate for what makes humans good humans, but even this requires some qualification. For making sense of the Decalogue as a whole is a different question than a purely social question1, for the Sabbath (and other lines of the Decalogue) lead us into explicitly religious territory2. Likewise, the first* commandment—contra idolatry in multiple forms—is not one which has to do with recourse to biological necessities or civic excellence. One can not murder and yet not think about God.
But there is more than one way to talk about what an ordered society might need than the strictly biological. In tying the comprehensive words together, a vision is given for a world in which God’s name, adultery, murder, our possessions, our families, and more are all tied together. That some of these aspects might be affirmed is not surprising. But the gift of the Decalogue is that it offers more than we need for daily bread to be distributed well.
Let us consider Egypt’s inclusion in the prologue again. Egypt, was, after all, a house of bread: this is how Israel came to be in Egypt in the first place. But when we receive others, we receive more than we intend. For in receiving Israel, Egypt received not only workers, but criticism, and a word of its liberation. For the word is given to the suffering Israel within a house of suffering (Egypt): the prologue creates an intrinsic link to the world beyond Israel, that what is given here has to do with what happened there. The slavery of Egypt was tied into the world of the gods, who ruled rivers, livestock, the sun: it’s moral enslavement and spiritual enslavement were of one piece. And so, Israel’s comprehensive freedom, named in the Decalogue, worked out among the Egyptians, was already a light of judgment and freedom unto the Egyptians: a world built on enslaving others cannot last, and the gods who sustained that slavery cannot be sustained. And so, in time, you will see that this Word—which has undercut your gods and devastated your armies—will set you free as well.
It is not a light that is received fully yet: arguably, this will wait until the Light of the World comes again to Egypt as a refugee. In time, Egypt will become the epicenter of many of the most important events of the first centuries of Christianity. But here already, we see what will be common, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile: Egypt is not forgotten in the giving of the Word to Israel.
But long before that, after the dust of the Red Sea has settled, Egypt will be come to be wanted again, for its leeks and melons3, much like Egypt wanted Israel only for its labor. This seed of wanting is small, it seems, but God can work with that to give more than we intend to give. They remained in Israel’s memory as a dual image: wanted and unwanted, hated and desired. That Israel did not want to love Egypt is true, but in time, the house of Israel, through the Son of Israel, would come to embrace even Egypt.
Neighbors Wanted and Unwanted
This duality of the prologue—that it includes that which we want to disavow, but desire in part—is something for us to pay attention to: we are often tied to things which have made us what we are, and which we cannot easily disavow. Consider Israel, then, not just as a past neighbor (both wanted and unwanted) of Egypt, but in its future. For this is the story of Israel and its neighbors—Assyria, Babylon, Rome, Greece—as both a wanted and unwanted neighbor. For Israel will receive visitors from Ethiopia, from across Canaan, and yet, Israel remains unwanted in the fullness of its figure.
This is life with our neighbors, and it is frequently a relation of hardship. When Israel experiences this duality from its new neighbors, it will not be the first time: the Decalogue’s opening reminds them that they were wanted for their labor, but not as people, feared for their numbers but loved for the work that number accomplished. Being a neighbor within Egypt came, pathologically, by being reduced to being a worker—a dehumanized neighbor. It is a lesson that Israel will not remember, reducing its own people to working capacities in the days of Solomon. Our lives with our neighbors mark us longer than we wish, it seems.
This word—first to Israel, and then to Egypt, first to the Jew and then to the Gentile: it is a word that should stay with us, though we wish to forget it, and to cut ourselves off from that which is behind us. But there is never a time in which Israel will have neighbors on its own terms. There is never a time when Israel can live under its own fig tree4 and forbid the Ninevites the same5, or bless the Babylonians among whom they live, or seek the good of Phoneicans who wish their daughters freed of demons6.
This is, in the beginning of the Decalogue, what the Word given is for: to covenant with a people who will be a people among the peoples. Their light will be for the Gentiles, for the nations. Their words will be given to the world, and through them, the light will break forth. But it will not be seamless or at a remove: it will be by living in the midst of enemies who will one day, by the work of Israel’s Son, be joined to them in praise of the Father.
Here, I have in mind certain accounts of natural law which are closer to evolutionary biology than those frequently discussed by theologians, who see natural law as that which images God’s own limits and designs for humans as such.
A kind of Freudian/ Feuerbachian projection would suggest that these natural rhythms become projected on a Big Other, such that rest becomes something that a Big Other must want: whatever cosmic forces there are are at ease, and to live well in that world means to rest regularly as well.
Num. 11: 4-6
Micah 4:4
Jonah 4:6-11
Matthew 15:22