TEN COMMANDMENTS? NO SUCH THING!

Our parashah of this week, Yitro, is known above all else as home to the Ten Commandments, which is odd only because The Ten Commandments may not exist.  Now I realize that is a terrible thing to hear, and my intent is not to disturb anyone’s faith, and for sure someone will take me to task for it, but hear me out.  In parashat Yitro, nowhere is there a reference to Ten Commandments. Moses knows that God is going to speak, that the voice will be heard from a thick cloud covering Mount Sinai, that all the people—not just Moses—will hear it, that the people need to be pure when the communication happens and no one should venture up the mountain.  When the day of the great revelation arrived, there was fire on the mountain, it smoked, it quaked, the blare of a horn resounded throughout the camp, and when the critical moment arrives, the text reads:  God spoke these words saying (Exodus (20:1).  Nowhere in our parashah is this revelation referred to as the Ten Commandments, which should lead us to ask:  Are there really Ten Commandments at all?

There are certainly some scholars who would argue that the parsing of this section of Torah, which itself covers 13 verses, into Ten Commandments, may be good marketing but lousy scholarship.  One could argue that there are more than ten rulings in this passage.  But the point is that at no point are they ever referred to as commandments.  It is only later in the Torah (Exodus 34:28) that this sacred engraving is referred to as Aseret Hadevarim, meaning the Ten Sayings or Speakings or Statements, that we understand that ten is a critical number, but still—no reference to commandments. 

The Torah is teaching us something of great significance here.  The commandments themselves are not earth shattering.  The idea of Shabbat is certainly unique to the Israelites, and the idea f having one God is that message of monotheism, Israel’s gift to the world, but there were certainly already laws against murder, theft and false testimony.  What made the Ten Commandments unique was more than content, it was its source.  It was the idea that these ideas were spoken by God and not merely the invention of the human heart or head.  In Rabbinic Hebrew, we refer to this section of Torah as the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Speakings.  We focus not on the idea of commandment, but on the idea of divine communication—God speaks to us and gives us the guidance as to how to conduct our lives. 

Some claim that God no longer speaks to us.  Our biblical ancestors were luckier than we, in that regard.  But is that true?  Does God no longer speak to us or have we grown deaf to the voice of God?  If you are waiting for the word of God to materialize as do the words of an anchor on the evening news, you’ll never hear the word of God.  But if you begin to connect the dots of your experiences living in the real world, in real time, and begin to see the pattern of which of your decisions and activities create peace and growth, and which do not, the intangible word of God will crystallize before you.

Aseret Hadibrot—Ten Speakings were given to the people of Israel. The eleventh is for you and you alone.