Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 Commentary

Leaving Out the Hard Bits

Reading through the Lectionary selection this week, I had the feeling I get when my pre-schooler, who is playing in the other room, suddenly goes quiet. Immediately suspicious, I want to know what he’s up to. So, similarly, it might be important to investigate the quiet bits, the parts the Lectionary skips. Whereas the other commands are straight-forward, the 2nd and 4th commands extend a brief commentary section. This is what the Lectionary omits.  But the explainers were important enough for God to add so they might be worth our paying some attention to as well.

Verses 5-6

While many Bible translations opt for describing God as “a jealous God,” the Common English Bible suggests that God is “a passionate God.” Whereas jealous is almost entirely negative, “passionate” offers us both the good and the bad. The CEB Study Bible observes that passion instructs us toward the intensity of God’s relationship with Israel.  While God is punishing, God is also gracious.  “God’s passion for Israel is expressed both as powerful king and as loving parent.” I can imagine the compilers of the Lectionary being reticent to dive into that punishing part. It is hard to understand and, on one hand, we should leave it just so.  

On the other hand, we might also observe that the goodness of God’s grace extends far beyond any punishment, even in this text. Compare 3-4 generations with a thousand generations!  Robert Alter adds to this that “the ancient view may well have been that God’s mercy was manifest in demanding retribution from only three or four generations while granting kindness for a thousand generations.” On top of that, we do well to consider the places—later in Hebrew Scripture—where it appears God even relents from that. See, for example, Jeremiah 31:29-31 in which a new covenant is foreshadowed, one in which we will no longer say “sour grapes eaten by parents will have a bitter taste in the mouths of their children.

Reading this prophecy as Christians, we celebrate the way God sets us free from old patterns of behavior.  Children raised with harsh abuse can choose to raise their own children differently, for example. See the illustration below for more on this theme.

Verses 10-11

The second omitted portion of this Scripture passage is, perhaps, less controversial in that it does not paint God in any kind of tricky light. But it does extend the Sabbath command. Reading verses 8-9 in isolation can make it seem like a command to personal piety.  Each person must take one day off each week.  The excised verses both extend and deepen the command.  It is not sufficient for the righteous person to take a break once a week.  The righteous person must ensure that *everyone* is afforded rest.  In fact not even just those in your family but even the people and animals who work on your behalf.  Of special note to the author of Exodus, God calls on the faithful to protect the right of the immigrants in their midst to experience rest…which could make this section controversial after all, depending on your context and the political climate of your congregation!  

As though imagining we will be quick to push back on this command — doesn’t God know how busy I am cleaning up after my family, making a roast for the family after church on Sunday, planning schedules, menus and appointments for the week?! — God roots this command in creation.  If God rested after the work of creation, who are *you* to think that the earth will fall out of orbit if you take a nap? 

Just in case you aren’t yet convinced, when the book of Deuteronomy picks up and recasts this command, they add an additional rationale: God liberated Israel from cruel slavery in Egypt, where the people had to work all day every day. Robert Alter argues that, for the recently liberated Israelites in the wilderness, this resonance would have been quickly understood by the earliest recipients of the law. Yes, the Sabbath reconnects us to the God of creation and “at the same time, the liberation from labor, especially with the stipulations that one’s male and female slaves should equally be freed of labor on the seventh day, surely would have brought to the mind of these newly freed slaves the blessings of freedom, of cessation from labor.” Our rest, then, teaches our bodies and maybe even eventually our imagination, mind, and self-awareness, that we are not slaves and neither ought we to enslave others with oppressive working conditions. 

Illustration

I am struck by the recent work of psychologists on the extended effect that trauma has in families.  For example, a reputable study, cited in Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score demonstrates that the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors pursue therapy at higher rates than the general population.  Diseases like alcoholism or drug addiction can often be traced back through a family line and, even if the behavior is stopped, it is often diverted to other destructive habits.  This raises an important question about whether God actively intervenes to punish “to the third and fourth generation” or whether Scripture observes what family systems theory has well documented in the domain of counseling psychology: generations will play out trauma up the branches of the family tree until and unless someone steps up and decides, often with great difficulty, to learn a new way of coping. Changing relationship patterns is not simply a matter of self-discipline but of releasing decades of maladaptive behavior. Honoring and praying for those who have chosen this path could be a helpful pastoral move this Sunday.