1st Commandment: No Other Gods

Today we begin reading through the Ten Commandments. Now I've been familiar with the Bible my whole life, and I've been familiar with the Ten Commandments my whole life, but I learned something completely new to me. I thought that Moses was up with God alone on the mountain when God gave Israel the Ten Commandments. And I thought this because there is a later scene when Moses is up on the mountain with God and God inscribes the Ten Commandments into stone. But when God first speaks the Ten Commandments, Moses is down at the base of the mountain with the Israelites. And they hear the words blasting down like thunder, and it frightens them. The people's response to the Ten Commandments is they think they're going to die. Getting in touch with what is really true is actually going to feel so counter to what I think is normal life. What they hear booming down is this. I am Yahweh your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. The first line in the Ten Commandments is not a command, but a reminder of who God is and who they are. This is a family whose fundamental identity is we used to be slaves, being slowly killed off. And we were liberated. How do we live as freed people? One way to think about the Ten Commandments is it's like a freedom ethic. It's the ethic of the free. This freedom ethic begins in the context of an intimate relationship with the divine. I will be your God and you will be my people. I am my beloved and my beloved is mine. After this we get to the first two commands. There will not be for you any other Elohim before me. And you will not make for yourself an idol. These two commands are so tightly bound together that in some traditions they're counted as just one command. But in today's episode we'll look closely at the first. You will have no other Elohim. That is, no other gods. When humans give our imaginations and desires and allegiances to anything that's not the source of all reality, it will eventually lead us on a path that dehumanizes us and other people. How do we live in reality? How do we live as free people? This is the great mystery that the first word invites us into. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. Hello, John Collins. Hello. We've been in this series of conversations leading up to getting into the Ten Commandments. And today we're going to start reading the Ten Commandments. Here we are, out Mount Sinai, with the Israelites. We surveyed in the last couple episodes the theme of God telling people what to do, basically in the Genesis scroll. When God gives a command to people, it is for the preservation of their life and to enhance the flourishing of their lives. God told Adam and Eve, enjoy all the trees of the garden and avoid the one that will kill you. He told Noah, make an ark for the preservation of your life and your family and of all these animals. And the future of humanity. And the future of humanity. And he told Abram, on multiple occasions, to leave your family and go do this. And I'm going to bless all the nations through you. And Abram sometimes does what God says. But when he ultimately did what God said, leading up to Genesis 22, it led to the preservation of his life, his son's life, and of God's covenant promise of blessing going out to all the nations again. God is for life. God is for life. He's the author of life. And humans are his covenant partners. So he's brought the Israelite family now to the foot of Mount Sinai. And we ended our last conversation looking at the introductory speech to the commands that God gives to Israel at Mount Sinai. And God's author is this, listen to my voice and keep my covenant. And if so, then you'll be my special crew among all the nations. You'll be a priestly kingdom. You'll represent me to the nations. You'll be a holy nation set apart. The terms of this covenant are going to set you apart and then make you my representatives to the nations. And the purpose then, even though not stated here plainly is for life, for your life, for the life of the nations. This is for life. At the end of the last conversation, it seemed really important to point out that when we talk about God's commands, it seems easy to slip into this just moral obligation. Like, okay, well God's got a standard and we just got to meet God's standard and keep God happy and check off the list and stay on God's good side. And I guess that's a caricature that becomes not very helpful when you think of the way the Bible presents God's commands, which are, like I've authored life. I'm inviting you in to participate with me creating more life. And I want you to find the good and eat and enjoy and be blessed and bless the nations. But it's going to be hard and you're not going to always know the difference. And so I need you to learn to be wise by listening to my voice. And for us to have this kind of relationship, this covenant means you establishing a habit and an ability to listen to my voice. That's good. That's a great summary. Yeah, it's a great summary. Yeah, it is in my best interest to keep the commands of God, not because it makes God happy, though when people live in line with reality and what is true and good, of course that brings pleasure to God, but it is also in my own best interest. Yeah, that's the ultimate frame. I become more human, more of an image of God when my actions and desires are more in line with God's purpose and will. And that's what he's inviting this ancient Near Eastern, what is right now, tribal federation of migrating shepherd tribes. Somewhere three to 4,000 years ago. Well, it depends on where and how you date it, but 32 to 3500 years ago or something like that. So that's God's offer. And the 10 commandments are the first of these terms of the covenant. Following these is equivalent to listening to the voice of God. And they're parked at the foot of this mountain and God shows up. It's a pretty intense scene in Exodus 19 verse 18. Now Mount Sinai was in smoke, all of it, because Yahweh came down upon it in fire. The smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace. The whole mountain was trembling and it came about like a sound of a trumpet getting stronger and stronger and Moses would speak and Elohim would answer him with sounds. That is intense. So intense. Yeah. It's super intense. That's the scene. Okay. Fire on the mountain. And then out of the fire when it says Elohim would answer him with sounds. And then here you go. What is it that God said out of the fire in the cloud? Exodus 20 verse one, 10 commandments. So even just right there, let's just pause. The group of people sitting at the foot of a mountain. And Moses is there with them at this point and God shows up. God shows up on the mountain, fire, quaking, the sound, the trumpets. This is all happening. And it's at this moment. Yep. And Elohim spoke all these words, saying. Okay. So wait, he's saying it from the top of the mountain while Moses at the bottom? Really? That's the scene. That's the scene? That's the scene. That's how the 10 are given? Is that new information to you? Oh yeah. Wow. And then they're hanging with God and God gave it to him. It's being blasted from the heights? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. So when God does come down, what we're told is that the people tremble at the bottom of the mountain. But then you get this little narrative after the 10 commandments and saying, now, back flash, when the people were seeing all the thunder and lightning and they trembled and stood at a distance and you're like, oh yeah, I remember that. They said something to Moses. What they said was, speak to us yourself and we will listen. Don't let God speak to us. We're going to die. Moses said to the people, don't be afraid. No, God's here to test you so that the fear of him might be on you and said that you won't sin, but the people stood at a distance. Okay. But what was it that freaked them out so much that made them not want to go up there? This was the trembling and the trumpet. This was the trembling and hearing a voice come from the mountain. And what did the voice say? And what the voice said was the 10 commandments. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh. So the scene is that everybody heard the 10 commandments, Moses and the people down on the mountain. And the people's response to the 10 commandments is they think they're going to die. And so they don't want to hear God talk to them anymore. Because the commandments are coming with such intensity. Super intense. Yeah. Yep. So then what they say is Moses, you go up and you talk with God and then... Work this out amongst yourselves. Yeah. And then Moses goes up and that's when the 10 words get written down on the tablets and then 42 more words. It's called the Covenant Code or the Scroll of the Covenant. He writes 42 first in chapter 24. And the first time we hear about the two tablets is in chapter 31, which is near the end of Moses's 40 days and nights on the mountain. Okay. But the main point is that Moses was with the people and everybody heard the 10. Moses is at the bottom of the mountain with Israel and they're booming down. That's the scene. And it's intense. It's freaking everyone out. And they're like, Moses, we can't handle the voice of God. We can't handle the situation. There's too much. Yeah. Go up there and like, work it out. And then Moses is like, he acknowledges that it's terrifying. But what he says is it's a test. God's come to test you so that the fear of him might remain on you that you don't sin. God wants you to be a little freaked out? Yeah. Yeah. The fear of the Lord. Which is that for us outside of Eden, our current condition is such that... Hearing the voice of God is intense. Hearing the voice of God is intense. Getting in touch with what is really true is actually going to feel so counter to what I think is normal life. And the question is, am I normal and is God abnormal? Or maybe I'm abnormal. And all a weird like mutated subhuman kind of creature now. When God is the one calling me to... We're back to that theme with Abraham or Noah of when God shows up to invite you to become the full version of who you really are. It's kind of terrifying. Yeah. It looks like a kind of death or surrender. Something like that's happening. So that's the theme. Okay. So what did Moses and the people hear? Yeah. The Lord, I am Yahweh, your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. There will not be for you any other Elohim before me. You will not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in the skies above or the land beneath or in the waters under the land. You will not worship them. You will not serve them because I, Yahweh, your Elohim, am a passionate Elohim. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the threes and the fours for those who hate me, but showing loyal love to thousands for those who love me and keep my commands. That's what people hear. Commands one and two are in there. Yeah. So what's really interesting is you get this speech about how I am Yahweh, your Elohim. That was repeated two times. The thing I just read. So I brought you out of the land of Egypt. That's in the opening. And then I am Yahweh, your Elohim, the passionate Elohim, and then this thing about the iniquity of the fathers and showing loyal love. And then in between those are no other Elohim and no idols. So that's the framework for the first two commands bound up in here. You could see them as so closely intertwined that some traditions see them as one. The one command. Command. Yeah. Just kind of expressed in two ways. So notice what we begin with is who God is to the people. And that makes sense. In other words, think of God, it just started with like, don't murder. You know, I mean, human life is really important. But there's something about how protecting human life, protecting marriages, protecting what belongs to them. All of that is kind of subordinate or bullet points under something even more foundational. Which is their shared history? Yeah, their shared history. And then who God is to them in that shared history. Yeah. Yeah. I am the one that brought you out of the land of Egypt. Yeah. Let's start there. Let's pause. Okay. So this is a family whose fundamental identity is we used to be slaves. And we were being slowly killed off. And we were liberated. And we were liberated because Yahweh, the Elohim of our ancestors, raised up a deliver for us. So we are a liberated people. Yahweh is our liberator. We are the liberated ones. The fundamental. We are the free ones. The free ones. Yeah. Which means that one way to think about the Ten Commandments is it's like a freedom ethic. It's the ethic of the free. How to live as a free people. How do we live as freed people? Pharaoh's not telling us what to do. But how does this not descend into its own type of chaos and slavery? Yeah, think. I mean, they've lived in slavery and in a land not their own for generations now. So they've been shaped by that. And probably been told many different stories about who they are as a people. So who you are is the people Yahweh has liberated. The New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, has an easy to remember way of putting this. He says, so Yahweh brings the people out of Egypt. And now that their amount of sign now, it's about getting Egypt out of the people, so to speak. Which is kind of a, but it's just saying they've been steeped in a culture for a long time. Like the values and the ethics of Egypt, the perspective, the way of being human there. Yes. Yeah, exactly right. Yep. Yeah. So that is significant. First of all, you are liberated people. Also this thing of I am Yahweh, you're Elohim. I'm yours. So you were mine, like I liberated you. So you're my people. But also the phrase, I am Yahweh, you're Elohim. I belong to you and you belong to me. So this little line is looting back to what Moses introduced this relationship as, which is a covenant. Hmm. It goes both ways. Yeah. This is a very interesting, there's a phrase that's going to get repeated throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers Deuteronomy and the prophets. This phrase where God will say, I will be your God and you will be my people. It was actually used first back in the early Exodus story when God says to the people, I'm going to take you as my people and I will be your God. So whenever God says, I am Yahweh, you're Elohim or you are my people, we're alluding to that. A phrase from the song of songs, I am my beloveds and my beloveds is mine. So I belong to the one that I love, the one that I love belongs to me. That's covenant language. Okay. This opening line of I am Yahweh, you're Elohim is just quick, but it is signaling the relationship between God and the people. So there's no command here. The first words of the 10 commandments are not a command. They're just a statement. I am Yahweh and you are mine. The fundamental context of this relationship is that we are bound together now. And so if that's the case, then there's a couple things that follow, especially in ancient polytheistic context. One is there will not be for you any other Elohim before me. And Elohim is the Hebrew word that just means divine being, spiritual being. Yeah, spiritual being. And it is used to refer to the one God of Israel, the creator of all, but then also to other spiritual beings, real or imagined. The imagined sort are what would be called idols. So no other Elohim and no other idols. They are two separate sentences to the fees of the first two prohibitions. So let's get into it here. So no other gods before me. That little phrase before me is really interesting. It's a phrase all panai. Most literally means in front of my face. So it's really interesting. So this phrase all panai or all panai is a very common prepositional phrase. This is the grammar term to refer to something being in a physical location like right in front of you. So let's see, just a couple random examples. There's a story about David who's on this march with a whole bunch of people. And so we're told that 600 men came with him from the town of Gath and they passed on all panai, the king, before the face of the king. So it's literally like the vanguard. Percessional. Yeah, they're all marching together. So you have like a group of soldiers who go ahead of you. Okay. Something like that. Okay. Before his face. Oh, I see. So it means literally in front of you. In front of you. In front of you. Oh, okay. Literally in front of. Mm-hmm. So the phrase all panai can also, this can be confusing to us, can be used not in the sense of in front of you, but in the sense of beside you. It is sometimes used in the sense of instead of, this is really interesting. So there's this law in Deuteronomy about let's say that a guy has two wives. He doesn't tell the story of how he ended up with two wives, but he has two wives. And let's say he really loves one, but he doesn't love the other anymore. If both of these women have sons, but the first born son is not from the wife that he loves. He can't just like swap sons. Can't withhold the first born right. No. He has to follow the custom and the tradition for giving the first born a greater share of the inheritance. So literally what it says in Hebrew is he cannot make the son of the wife he loves the first born before the face of the son that he does not love. It means instead of. I see. So here's the point is this Hebrew prepositional phrase is actually really ambiguous. It's very flexible. It's very flexible. Yeah. It's spatial metaphor that then can be used in many different situations. Yes. Yeah. It can be used in the sense of I just, I'm working through the dictionary entry here. I'm just giving you examples. It also can mean against the face. Okay. So before your face is, it's in front of you. But then let's say instead of David's men walking with him, like going in front of him, what if you have a hostile army coming towards you? That's also. They are also before your face. Before your face, but they're coming against you. Against your face. Yeah. Okay. I get that. So same phrase can mean. Same phrase. Yes. Coming against me. Yep. Here's a couple of examples in Nahum chapter two, the attacker advances against your face. So guard the fortress and watch the road. So what's interesting is when you come back here and when God says, you shall have no other Elohim against my face, would be the most literal way of rendering it. Oh, it'd be that connotation. Yeah. Or instead of me, the swapping. Totally. Yeah. It actually appears that all of these nuances. Kind of work. Because you can imagine him saying, look, I'm paying attention to everything. Don't put idols out there in front of me and start worshiping them. That's right. In front of me, beside me. Or along with me, which happened many times. In Israel's history that alternate statues of other deities were put up in the temple. But then there's also the connotation of, by doing this, you're swapping me out. Right. Or you're actually coming against me. Yeah. You can actually plug this idea of no other Elohim into every one of those meanings and it works. Yeah. What's the Hebrew again? Alpanai. Alpanai. This is just a wonderful instance of the biblical authors carefully choosing an ambiguous phrase and it seemed like they intend multiple meanings. So let's just pause here. This idea of no other Elohim often gets attached to a religious concept that has developed in, I don't know, modern academic discussion of this called monotheism. Yeah. Mono one theism God. That's right. One God. So yes, one God. But here the existence or the nature of other Elohim isn't fully clear or worked out. It's less a claim about that I am the only Elohim that exists, the only spiritual being. But it could be that among many of the Elohim that could claim your allegiance, worship me only. You've got the Canaanites who've worshiped Baal. And he's- And Dogone and- Right. I mean there's a lot, a lot of Gods. Yeah. And so should I worship Yahweh? Yeah. Maybe I should also make sacrifice to Baal as well. And you're trying to figure this out. Yeah. But then I guess the question is, is that just an idol? Is that just a false thing or is there actually some sort of spiritual being connected? Exactly. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So the technical term given for you give your worship and your allegiance only to one God is monolatry. Okay. I give my allegiance only to one God because I have history with that God. Okay. And that's my God. I guess here's the point. Notice how the Ten Commandments say, I am Yahweh your Elohim. And then it doesn't go on to say I'm the only spiritual being in the universe. What he says is- It's quiet up here except for me. Yes. He just says, I'm the one who brought you up out of Egypt so don't have any other Elohim. Yeah. And I guess maybe to clarify, I'm not saying that there are many Creator Gods in the worldview of the biblical authors. That's not the point. You just used a new phrase, Creator God. Exactly right. It's exactly right. Yes. That everything comes from and just existed. Yeah. And through his word, that's unique. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And so it's significant then that Command Number Four, which is the Sabbath, is going to call back to creation. Remember the day of Sabbath to keep it holy. Six days do your work, seventh day you rest. Why? Because in six days Yahweh made the skies and the land and the sea. And you're like, oh yeah, the sky is the land and the sea. Those are the things I could create idols out of. Those are the three realms of don't make the likeness of anything in the skies above the land beneath or the waters under the land. These are all created things. Yes. And they're all created into more than what they are. That's right. So actually in an important way, part of the reason for commands one and two are also given in command four. So commands one and two are Yahweh is your liberator. Command four is Yahweh is the creator of all. And together those make up a combined reason for why you should have no other Elohim before me and certainly no physical representations of any other Elohim. So there's one creator God in the story of the Bible. But this phrase Elohim as a class of beings, which if you just said was the class of spiritual beings, we do know that there's other spiritual beings. We call them the host of heaven. Yeah. And this is one of the typical Hebrew words to describe the host of heaven. And then with the advent of the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Greek word Angalos messenger gets introduced into the equation from which we get our English word angel. So Deuteronomy 1017, Moses says Yahweh your Elohim. He is the Elohim of Elohim. Yeah. He's in a class of itself. Yes. Any other spiritual being other than Yahweh is not worthy of your ultimate loyalty and allegiance. Yeah. So the implicit claim there is any other Elohim isn't on the same rank as Yahweh. So any other Elohim is a creature. Yeah. Okay. Not your liberator or the creator to create it being. Yeah. So we're back to monotheism. We're back. Okay. So the point is that we're on our way to what will become a more robust and cleared view of monotheism, which essentially says there is only one creator Elohim who is not a being within creation, but is the author and source of all creation. So that's the capital G God. That's the capital G God. When we say there is but one God, we mean creature God. Yeah. When you get later to, you know, expressions of this like in Isaiah, where they just be like, I am Yahweh, the creator of all, there is no Elohim alongside me. The main point is that it would be irrational to give my allegiance to anything other than the one creator Elohim. Most of these other deities were connected to the cycles of nature like weather, to economic institutions. They were connected to sex and fertility. And so you're offering sacrifices, you're living your life with these things as your ultimate aim. In our context, we kind of dismiss this idea almost too much of other spiritual powers. Yeah. The neighbors aren't saying this is God, you know, the God of war over here. Like let's worship that God. But there are these entities that live in our imagination in the same slot as what God's did. So I live in America and there's a set of founding ideals that in theory, unify this land and people that I live in, you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. So there's these core ideals and actually all these ideals have icons and pictures attached to them with a history. There are actual statues, you know, of justice, Eustitia or paintings of statues. So many even of these modern, what we might think is secular ideals, the role they play in our imagination is the same as the gods. We just have the sense of honoring justice. So we do actually still have these higher powers, higher ideals that command our loyalty. And we always saying is that all loyalties that you could imagine giving to something else, ultimately their source is Yahweh alone. So why do you give your loyalty to something that's lower when ultimately it channels up to Yahweh as the creator and liberator? Yeah, it's different context, but there's still wisdom here. This begins a really important trajectory in Jewish and then in Christian thought, which is when humans give our imaginations and desires and allegiances to anything that's not the source of all reality, it will eventually lead us on a path that dehumanizes us and other people. I guess it's kind of easy to see that with sex, for example, or with money. With greed. Yeah, or with power, like political or just social influence or power. And those become ends in themselves. It leads to our destruction. So you rattle off a bunch of American ideals, justice, pursuit of happiness, freedom. Freedom, yes. Yeah. Comes right from this story. But don't worship freedom, worship the God who freed you. That's right. Yeah. So, I am Yahweh your Elohim. No other Elohim liberated you. Yahweh wants to invite his people into a covenant partnership, an intimate bond. I am yours and you are mine. But then also apparently the way to live as freed people is to begin from this foundation that there is for us one Elohim, the one who liberated us and the one who made all that is in the land, sky and sea. And I will find what my greatest fulfillment, my greatest freedom, my greatest flourishing when that's my true north is to give my allegiance to the one who is the source, the source of all and the one who freed me. That's how the Ten Commandments begin. Yeah, there's ten words for finding life. Mm-hmm. And the first. For living as the free. Living as the free. Mm-hmm. And the second one is about where your allegiance is. Yes. When Jesus calls himself the truth. Mm-hmm. I am the truth. Okay. In John 14, he's picking up a thread from earlier in John's Gospel where he says, if you listen to me and come to recognize who I am and I am is repeated multiple times in John's Gospel and that's Jesus' way of claiming to have that intimate union with Yahweh. Because that's what Yahweh means. Yahweh means the one who is. And he says, knowing that truth will set you free. Mm-hmm. That's what he says in John 10. Mm-hmm. I am the truth. If you know the truth, the truth is what sets you free. And that's essentially Jesus is remixing like the ideas from the prologue and the first command right here. Really? Yeah. The truth is that there is one Elohim who is the Creator and liberator of all. And to give your allegiance to the truth is to live as the free. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because you're living in reality. I don't have to constantly wonder, is there some other force that work in the universe that I need to hedge my bets for that I need to watch out for? Yeah. It's a very bold claim. And it's a bold way to live in the universe to say there's only one ultimate one that matters in the universe. Mm-hmm. And it's not me. It's also not my neighbor. And it's also not the weather. Mm-hmm. Right? It's also not the ground. Yeah. Not the accumulation of wealth. It's not my strength, but for my nation's strength. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's the Creator of all and the one, if I'm in Israel, I liberated my ancestors from slavery. I just need to aim my life in allegiance and loyalty and love to that one. And somehow it'll all fall into place. It's the first command. Yeah. You could spend your life meditating on the implications of the first command, which is... Yeah. Mm-hmm. It's a negative. Don't have any other gods. Okay. So if you flip it over, remember in our first conversation, you can kind of flip over each of the 10. Mm-hmm. Half of one god. Yeah. The negatives tend to be very specific. Mm-hmm. But then once you flip the negative into a positive, it becomes really open-ended. So don't give your allegiance to any other god. Only give your allegiance to the one god who is liberator and creator. Mm-hmm. And you're saying that's open-ended because now you're like, what does that look like? Wow. What does allegiance look like? Yeah. What is a life like that? Yeah. And what type of allegiance is due? Someone like that. Because there's only one someone of like that and all the reality. How do you give loyalty to that one alone? Well, and there you go. That's, I guess, what it means to live as an image of God. We are meant to create goodness on his behalf with him. And this is an invitation into something pretty grand. Yeah. And at the base of it is to remember like one way to really screw this up is to start giving your allegiance to other things that aren't actually the creator god. This is the way of freedom. This is the way of life. Mm-hmm. Yeah. To acknowledge something that's not God as the ultimate source of my being is to live a lie. It's to live out of sync with reality, which means that it will eventually at some point turn ruinous to myself and other people because lies don't set you free. But this is a bold claim. It's a very bold claim. Yeah. And it's precisely this trajectory of no other Elohim, you know, that will in the Christian tradition lead to Jesus saying things like, I am the way, the truth and the life and the way to the fathers through me. That's a claim. That's just as bold. But it's also carrying forward the logic of the first command right here that it's possible to live your human existence in a lie, thinking that someone or something or some power has a claim on me that actually doesn't. But when I get in touch with the one who truly has a claim on my life because they are the author of my life, then I'm living in the truth and I'm living in the road to freedom. That's a concept that we're watching come into birth right here as we hear God say these words. These are world shaping words and it's just the first command. Thank you for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week we'll continue in the Ten Commandments and we'll look at the second command. You will not make for yourself an idol. What's the significance of idols and why is it such a big deal in the Bible? Idolatry. So what do these things mean in their ancient context that might help us think about what it means for us in our context? 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