12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.[44 (#ulink_3ab9ced6-bfa5-573b-b43c-a0b189c2005d)]
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
18 When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid[45 (#ulink_4404a868-5e4c-5e8f-9e5c-b919c8eec405)] and trembled and stood at a distance,
and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”
Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.”
Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
For reflection: Exodus 20:18–21
We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.
—from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
22 The LORD said to Moses: Thus you shall say to the Israelites: “You have seen for yourselves that I spoke with you from heaven.
You shall not make gods of silver alongside me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold.
You need make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your offerings of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.
But if you make for me an altar of stone, do not build it of hewn stones; for if you use a chisel upon it you profane it.
You shall not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.”
21 These are the ordinances that you shall set before them:
2 When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt.
If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.
If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s and he shall go out alone.
But if the slave declares, “I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out a free person,”
then his master shall bring him before God.[46 (#ulink_cde64ca8-2b6c-5fb1-8458-1c3a1d07dd86)] He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him for life.
7 When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.
If she does not please her master, who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt unfairly with her.
If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter.
If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife.[47 (#ulink_69dc571e-ce55-5db5-8909-2da4e920dabb)]
And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out without debt, without payment of money.
12 Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death.
If it was not premeditated, but came about by an act of God, then I will appoint for you a place to which the killer may flee.
But if someone willfully attacks and kills another by treachery, you shall take the killer from my altar for execution.
15 Whoever strikes father or mother shall be put to death.
16 Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is still held in possession, shall be put to death.
17 Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.
18 When individuals quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or fist so that the injured party, though not dead, is confined to bed,
but recovers and walks around outside with the help of a staff, then the assailant shall be free of liability, except to pay for the loss of time, and to arrange for full recovery.
CORRECTING AND HARMONIZING
There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by cheating or bullying. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual—when the different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another. You can get the idea plain if you think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy very long. On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order they will not be able to avoid collisions. Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player’s individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others.
But there is one thing we have not yet taken into account. We have not asked where the fleet is trying to get to, or what piece of music the band is trying to play. The instruments might be all in tune and might all come in at the right moment, but even so the performance would not be a success if they had been engaged to provide dance music and actually played nothing but Dead Marches. And however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta.
Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.
—from Mere Christianity
For reflection
Exodus 20:1–26
20 When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished.
But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.
22 When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine.
If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
