What is the First of the Ten Commandments?
Points to Ponder: #17 Yitro ⎸Translated by Leah Hartman
Painting: Roland Hunter (rotated)
It’s history’s greatest story: a sprawling epic of an enslaved people condemned to cruel decrees; a baby born into slavery but raised in the king’s palace, who grows to be his people’s savior; a heavenly revelation in the heart of the desert; ten supernatural plagues from heaven; and finally, a cinematic climax in the form of a sea split in two. The story reaches its peak as the fleeing people arrive at the foot of Mount Sinai where they ready themselves for the revelation of their redeemer, the Creator of the world.
Amidst thunder, lightning, and horn blasts, the revelation emanates from the fog surrounding the mountain in the form of ten heavenly statements known throughout the world today as the “Ten Commandments,” in Hebrew aseret ha-dibrot. Considered one of the most foundational texts ever written—not only for Jews, but for all mankind—the Ten Commandments are seen as encapsulating the essence of monotheistic morality.
Faith as an Implicit Imperative
Let us take a closer look at the first of the Ten Commandments. It differs from the others in that it does not contain an explicit commandment. All it says is, “I am the Lord your G-d, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” There is neither an instruction nor a prohibition here, just a statement. The Creator, as it were, introduces Himself to His people.
Jews are so accustomed to thinking of this verse as the first of the Ten Commandments, that they are often shocked to learn that in Christianity, a religion followed by billions of people around the world, this verse is not considered one of the Ten Commandments! According to the Christian interpretation, the first commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me,” which for Jews is the second. The Christians preserve the number 10 by splitting up the final commandment, “You shall not covet,” into two: the prohibition against coveting your neighbor's wife and the prohibition against coveting your neighbor's property.1
This system is still propagated today. For example, when, in the 1980’s, the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski directed his “Dekalog” film series based on the Ten Commandments, he followed this count, thus reinforcing its influence in the consciousness of the general public worldwide.
However, the people who received the Ten Commandments and were entrusted with the task of interpreting them heard, and understood, otherwise. It was clear to them that the statement “I am the Lord your G-d” is the first of the commandments, and in many ways the most important of them, the one from which all the others derive. Although it contains no explicit imperative, the Jewish sages recognized it contained an implicit one: the commandment of faith. As Maimonides wrote in his seminal Halachic treatise Mishneh Torah: “Knowing this [i.e., that there is a Creator] is a commandment, as it says, 'I am the Lord your G-d’.”
There are manifold reasons why knowing of this disparity between the Jewish and Christian interpretations is important. To begin with, we live in a global age where many Jews and non-Jews interact daily, both face-to-face and online. In such an age, such facts should be deemed as basic common knowledge. Secondly, in recent years, more and more leading rabbis (including my own, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh) have begun to speak about the importance of teaching Torah to the peoples of the world. In this context, the prior concepts non-Jews have of the Torah, especially of something as fundamental as the Ten Commandments, is crucial.
And there’s another, even deeper reason. The fact that Christianity failed to recognize the first commandment as one of the ten actually highlights its ambiguity and wonder. The commandment of faith which it embodies is fundamentally different from all other commandments and prohibitions. It does not confront us directly in the form of a demand, but rather positions itself tentatively before us in the form of a statement. It’s an invitation, a summons to embark on a journey to encounter the unknown.
An I-Thou Relationship
The mystery surrounding the first commandment pertains especially to its first word, Anochi, “I am”. This seemingly innocent word, which appears hundreds of times in the Bible and which we have already encountered many times prior to the story of the giving of the Torah, takes on new validity, interest, and meaning in its standing as the opening word of the Ten Commandments, and thus of the entirety of G-d's oral revelation through the Torah.
The first thing this word offers us, of course, is the emphasis on G-d as Someone who speaks to us personally, using the first person singular, as opposed to perceiving G-d as Something—an abstract entity, lacking character. This emphasis is stressed in the following words, “your G-d,” which employ (in Hebrew) the second person singular. This, of course, is a foundational tenet of monotheism: that the Creator is not merely some kind of omnipotent consciousness, intellect, or creative force, as many mystical and philosophical traditions perceive G-d, but rather possesses a personality of sorts. We are free to think of Him as a father, a king, or even a loving partner, and establish a personal relationship with Him. The next commandment, the prohibition against idolatry, serves as a deterrent against anthropomorphizing this figure into a statue or image; but this prohibition is still second, a tool designed to refine the fundamental belief in a personal G-d.
The second question that arises regarding the word Anochi is why G-d chooses this particular word in this passage and not the shorter and more common Hebrew word for “I,” Ani. I’ll share three fascinating interpretations of this choice, which together paint a rich picture of the essence of the word in this context.
One interpretation, and perhaps the most surprising, is the suggestion by the Jewish Sages that the word Anochi is actually an Egyptian word! Why would G-d open Judaism's most fundamental revelation in Egyptian? The Sages compare this to a king whose son is captured by an enemy nation and remains there so long that he forgets his mother tongue. When father and son are finally reunited, the father, in his sensitivity, opens the conversation with his son in the language of his captors, before moving on to speak in their common tongue.
A second interpretation of the sages is that the word Anochi is the acronym of the Aramaic words Ana Nafshi Ketavit Yehavit. The literal meaning of this phrase is “I myself wrote [these words] and gave [them to you],” but it can also be read as saying I wrote myself into these words and gave them to you—G-d placed His essence and His soul in the words of the Torah. This interpretation emphasizes that every word we learn in the Torah is not just a story or a teaching, but a personal appeal from G-d to us, part of a heart-to-heart conversation that He has with us.
An additional interpretation is that the word Anochi is related to the Hebrew word anachi, which means vertical or perpendicular. This word appears in the Bible (see Amos 7:7), but according to interpreters is derived from Arabic. It refers to a plumb line, i.e. a weight tied to a string such as is used by builders as a vertical reference line. The connection here is that the divine entreaty of Anochi draws a metaphorical vertical line which connects the Divine “I” to the human “I”, lifting us up from the “horizontal” worldview of being entrenched in nature, where everything is equalized and nothing is transcendent.
These three interpretations have two things in common: first, each attributes the word Anochi to a language that is not Hebrew; second, each expresses a personal appeal by G-d to each and every one of us, wherever we are. These two commonalities are profoundly interconnected: Each of us is immersed in our own world and our own language, but G-d seeks to penetrate all of our worlds and establish an interpersonal relationship with us.
The First Commandment and the Last Commandment
We began our discussion with the contrast between the interpretation of the Sages, who recognize the verse “I am the Lord, your G-d” as the first of the Ten Commandments, and the Christian approach, which considers this merely a prelude and instead divides the last commandment into two parts. It therefore compels us to conclude by analyzing the relationship between the first and last commandments.
According to Jewish teachings, it is customary to divide the Ten Commandments into two groups, as they are divided on the Tablets of the Covenant, and to understand the first five commandments as addressing the relationship between man and G-d, while the last five address the relationship between man and his fellow man. However, if we look more closely, it seems that in each of these two groups, the last commandment is different from the previous four.
The last commandment of the first group of five, “Honor your father and your mother”, is not exactly a commandment between man and G-d, but more like a bridge connecting the commandments between man and G-d to those between man and fellow man. Our parents are, on the one hand, human beings, but on the other hand, they are partners with G-d in our creation, and as such this commandment connects the first four commandments with the four that follow.
And what about the last commandment, “You shall not covet”? Since this commandment is more about thoughts than actions, it does not quite belong to the group of commandments between man and fellow man. No one can know what is going on in our hearts, and isn’t directly harmed by it. The last commandment can therefore be considered as standing for a third category: commandments between man and himself. This refers to the whole expanse of inner work which the Torah calls on us to do and that takes place entirely within our hearts.
This understanding reveals a deep connection between the first and the last commandment: In the inner work that occurs between man and himself, even more than in the performance of the commandments between man and G-d, man encounters G-d in the most intimate of ways.
This is the case the Catholic interpretation, which is based on the division of the paragraphs as they are written in the Book of Deuteronomy. In addition, there are two other interpretations used by Protestants: the Lutheran one which divides between “You shall not covet your neighbor's house” and “You shall not covet your neighbor's wife and his servant…” based on the text in the Book of Exodus; and the Calvinist one, which divides between “You shall have no other gods before me” to “You shall not make for yourself an image…,” based on the interpretation of Philo of Alexandria and the translation of the Septuagint.