The One Where Moses Lays Down the Law with Ten Commandments
Parshat Yitro
You spend all day and night scribbling the word of G-d and all you’ve got to show for it is two tablets with ten bullet points.
Amidst all the thunder and lightning and the biggest light show since Plague Nine hit the capital city of Egypt, Moses delivers the word of G-d. He’s tired, exhausted, and barely able to stand, but fuck, can he put on a show.
Moses was strapped for time.
Seven weeks after the Exodus, he had been trapped in an administrative hell. Every man and his dog wanted a judgment from Moses. The Hebrews were struggling to unite as one nation. Living side-by-side in such close quarters was causing all manner of disagreements.
Shimon stole Rafi’s sheep. Hera slept with Dovid’s wife. Rahel had smuggled a pig into camp and Yonatan had no respect for boundaries. The queue for a ten-minute fireside chat with Moses stretched around the block. And G-d was getting fed up with all the grievances.
“Moshe, have I made a mistake? All The Chosen want to do is split hairs. I need more love. Moshe? Are you listening to me?”
“I’m tired G-d. I need help. I need an assistant or a PA or something. There’s too much paperwork.”
Enter Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, and the priest of Midian. News had traveled slowly but finally, Jethro got wind of the miracles happening outside of Egypt. Curious fellow, he decided to take a look for himself bringing with him Moses’s wife, Tzipporah, and Moses’ two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. His family had been left stranded in Midian while Moses was busying himself freeing the Hebrews.
Jethro was a heathen.
Worse, he was the High Priest of All Heathens. The Supreme Priest of the Pagan World. This was a bloke who had worshipped every single god known to man. He could also spot a good miracle. Who better to leave your wife and kids with while you galavant out of Egypt rescuing the Chosen while trying to persuade them you speak directly to the one, true G-d?
Jethro said: “Now I know that G‑d is greater than all gods (18:11)”
Jethro became a convert. Convinced by Moses’s story and miracle-making abilities, the Torah could now be offloaded to Israel. A confession from the Highest Priest of all the High Priests of Midian, Palm Springs, and beyond was the kind of endorsement that could launch a thousand gods.
Jethro then offered a word of advice to Moses.
Moses’ father-in-law said to him . . . “Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel” (18:17–19)
“Listen, Moshe, I see what’s happening here. Your hands are tied. The people, these people, demand a lot. They crave your attention. What you need is a secretary. Someone who will take notes. Set up a council too. Judges, lawyers, the whole shebang. Let them take care of this worthless bullshit. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“It’s true. I would love to get started on my Ten Commandments project.”
“Then Begin Moshe. I’ll take care of…all this. Don’t worry. This isn’t my first pig-slaughtering.”
“No pigs Jethro.”
“Not even bacon?”
“No pigs.”
Moses, unburdened by admin tasks, gets the call from G-d. The rendezvous was on. The light show was ready to begin and the angels had managed to fix the audio issue. News spread around the camp and everybody was excited to hear the voice of G-d.
Let the Ten Commandments Extravanganza begin!
“You know what would be really amazing, like a miracle to end all miracles, Moshe? You should do the show on ice!”
“No Jethro. No ice.”
“Dancing girls? Everybody loves dancing girls. Remember how Miriam got the crowd all excited?
“No dancing girls.”
“A BBQ then. We could slaughter some pigs, put them on a spit roast. The smell alone will draw a huge crowd.”
“For the love of G-d! NO ICE. NO DANCERS. AND NO PIG!”
“Alright Brother Moshe, only offering some advice.”
“G‑d spoke all these words, saying:
I am the L‑rd your G‑d, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
The Hebrews get overwhelmed. The voice of G-d is too powerful for their sensitive ears. The light show also hurts their eyes. The thunderclaps ring out in large decibels and the lightning scorches the Earth making them all tremble in fear. It is all too much for Team Israel.
“We wait seven weeks to hear the voice of G-d and then he speaks too loud. My ears hurt. They are literally ringing with all this racquet. Look, I don’t want to appear ungrateful or anything, but can you, you know, relay the message without so much earache? Like, tell us yourself what G-d has to say?”
Annoyed but unsurprised by their reaction, Moses agrees to relay the word of G-d with an indoor voice. Better yet, he spends the next six days jotting them down on two tablets of stone. The first tablet contains mitzvot that are “between man and G‑d,” while the commandments on the second tablet govern the relationship “between man and man.”
Moses was pretty pleased with himself as he climbed back down to Earth with the tablets in hand.
“Men, women, and Children of Israel. I bring forth the word of G-d who wishes for you all to abide by some house rules. We’ve workshopped these down to Ten bullet points with some notes*.
Number One:
“You shall have no other gods beside Me.”
I know some people are keen on Anubis, whose quite trendy right now, but it has to stop. G-d hasn’t gone through all the trouble of freeing your asses only for you to continue sacrificing virgins to the Egyptian God of Death.
That also means, Number Two:
“You shall not make for yourself any carved idol, or any likeness of any thing. . . . You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them.”
and Number Three:
“You shall not take the name of the L‑rd your G‑d in vain.”
Look, G-d is fair. He loves you loads. Our G-d is into your well-being and for that reason, G-d wants to evoke the seven-day rule as a commandment.
Number Four:
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a sabbath to G‑d. . . . For in six days G‑d made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore G‑d blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
And Number Five:
“Honor your father and your mother.””
There were a few murmurs of disagreement but G-d struck the protestors with lightning and burnt them to a crisp. It was a question of faith and if you didn’t believe after all that G-d had done, then why bother even showing up?
“Okay…quieten down. These next five concern your interactions with each other. They are very, very important. We can’t continue living in a just and fair community if we all go around butchering each other and humping thy neighbors.
Number Six to Ten are:
“You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.”
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your fellow.
You shall not covet . . . anything that is your fellow’s.”
“Got it? No more shagging, lying, stealing, or cheating. These are the basic rules we all need to live by if we want to remain as The Chosen People.”
There were a couple more laws but Moses had trouble fitting them on the tablet. They included a law about iron. G-d hated iron. He saw it as the root of all evil. It could be made into a tool for killing as well as creating. And shit, only G-d was in the creation business, not man.
“When you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you lift up your sword upon it, you have defiled it (20:22)”
The Parshat ends with Moses feeling exhausted yet smug. He no longer had to deal directly with complaints and he now had a solid guide as to how people should live their best lives.
*There were in fact 613 commandments made up of 620 letters which are said to represent the 613 mitzvot in the Torah. Thus the 10 commandments are the bedrock upon which the entire Torah is based.
I'm reminded of Mel Brooks' version of the story in "History of the World, Part 1": "Make that TEN commandments..."