Ten Commandments and the Stranger

Should schools and courthouses publicly display the Ten Commandments? As a rabbi and Hebrew Bible teacher, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s an undeniable intrusion of religious ideology into religiously neutral spaces. I’m no constitutional scholar, but privileging a biblical text in a public school excludes many kids and families who don’t revere the Bible. On the other hand, “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet” seem like worthy messages for anyone. And the Ten Commandments have played an essential role in defining America’s culture and jurisprudence.

But if we’re going to display the commandments, we should at least present them correctly. Here there’s an undeniable problem. I looked at more than 20 courthouse displays. They all, in various English styles, from King James to contemporary American, begin with “I am the Lord your God.” But they all leave out the next phrase, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” In other words, they omit the entire ethical structure that generates the commandments. In the Hebrew Bible, the Exodus from Egyptian isn’t simply a particular event that occurred to a particular people. It’s the ideological basis for the most repeated commandment in the Bible: to love – or refrain from oppressing – the stranger “because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” And the biblical stranger, of course, is an immigrant who shows up at your border. It’s the family of Jacob fleeing a famine in Canaan, moving to Egypt. It’s the Israelites escaping oppression. It’s Ruth and Naomi arriving penniless in the Land of Israel. You were immigrants, the Bible reminds its readers 52 times with nearly identical phrasing. You know what it’s like. So welcome the stranger.

Do the people who demand displaying the Ten Commandments in courthouses, or teaching the Ten Commandments in public schools also insist on loving the stranger who shows up at our borders? Possibly not, because, in the displays I studied, they also leave out the justification for the Sabbath. In Deuteronomy, the commandment to refrain from labor on the seventh day “you, your son or your daughter, your male or female servants, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female servants may rest as you do,” is followed by the admonition, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the sabbath day.” If you leave out the full text, you hide the core sense of the commandment. The Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible, isn’t a day off for you – it’s a day that you give your servants to take off. The same empathetic concern with the poor, the marginal, and the immigrant that generates the first commandment underlies the sixth. We were desperate immigrants in Egypt. We were oppressed. We know what it’s like.

If the purpose of teaching and displaying biblical passages is to highlight a key text from America’s religious heritage, why choose the Ten Commandments? Why not “Love your neighbor as yourself,” what’s become known as the Golden Rule – an important ethic for many cultures. But since the Hebrew word “re’echah” doesn’t mean “neighbor” it means “fellow human being,” this commandment would also involve loving and caring for poor immigrants.

If I were in charge of choosing biblical texts to display, I might pick Exodus 22:20-23, “You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me, and My anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives shall become widows and your children orphans.” Few other passages display so clearly the Hebrew Bible’s fierce concern for the stranger and others on the margins.

We live in a strange political/spiritual moment where those most insistent on displaying biblical passages are often also those most opposed to policies that conform to these very passages. I really have no objection to displaying the Ten Commandments. But maybe we should read them first.