Rabbi Gershon Silins

When something is so certain and final that it cannot be changed, we say that it’s “written in stone.” I thought about this the other day at a stone setting for a bereaved family. Their mother had passed away a few years ago, and her gravestone was next to the one we were dedicating. Someone said that the older gravestone had had a mistake in the inscription, but it had been corrected, even though it had been written in stone.

The Ten Commandments, also written in stone, are central to what many people think of as religion. People will often say, I’m not very religious, but I keep the Ten Commandments. I knew a fellow who had the Hebrew text of the Ten Commandments tattooed on his back.

In this week’s reading, Ki Tissa, the impatient people, waiting for Moses to return from the Mountain, riotously worship the idol they have created, the Golden Calf. When Moses descends and sees this, he smashes the tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. Rioting and plague follow, and when it is over, Moses ascends the Mountain again. He then comes back with a second set of tablets.

As central as they are, there is no definitive version of the Ten Commandments, not even in the Torah, which has two similar but not identical versions, one in Exodus and one in Deuteronomy. Some religions that share some version of the Hebrew Bible, which for them is the Old Testament, have similar but not identical versions as well, Protestants and Catholics having different versions. The Ten Commandments are frequently used in public displays, particularly in the United States, which has no established religion but is overwhelmingly Protestant. When the Commandments are publicly displayed, often carved in stone, what is usually shown is an abbreviation of the Protestant version.
One significant difference between the version in Exodus and the one in Deuteronomy is in the commandment about the Sabbath. In the Exodus version, people are told to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy because God worked for six days and rested on the seventh; but in Deuteronomy, the people are told to “keep the Sabbath day because you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Eternal your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” The Torah does not consistently give reasons for its commandments, so it is worth noticing when it does. And the reasoning is radically different from one version to the other. In one case, our day of rest derives from the creation of the world, and so is universal; in the other, it derives from our redemption as a people, and so is particular to us.

Our tradition says that there was no difference between the two versions – the people listening to them heard both at the same time. In the mystical text L’cha Dodi that ushers in the Kabbalat Shabbat service on Friday evening, we say: “shamor vezachor,” “God caused us to hear ‘keep’ and ‘remember’ as a single word.”
By the time we reach the second telling of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, forty years have passed, and the Ten Commandments are presented to a new generation. This generation is not the same as the one that left Egypt. They no longer remember being enslaved; they remember it only because they have heard their grandparents’ stories of slavery. The Commandments in Deuteronomy are different because the people had changed, and the Torah implicitly recognises that change.

So, there are variant versions the Ten, with some straightforward elements (don’t murder, don’t steal…) but also some that are more ambiguous (honour your father and mother…how? Is adultery as bad as murder? You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife – how does this commandment apply to women?) We can’t honour the Ten Commandments without critically engaging with them.

And, in the millennia since our ancestors stood at the foot of the Mountain, we, too, have changed. We see the world through critical, rational eyes, and we ask questions of our biblical text that our forebears could not have imagined. Our circle of caring has expanded to include all people. We hear the Commandments, yes, but differently than the generations that preceded us. Like the biblical text, the Judaism of today recognises human progress and maintains that it must be ethical as well as material. And that is what is written in stone.

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