Video Marathon: The Ten Commandments | Marathons

no document in world history so changed the world for the better as did the ten commandments western civilization the civilization that developed universal human rights created women's equality ended slavery created parliamentary democracy among other unique achievements would not have developed without them as you will see when each of the ten commandments is explained these commandments are as relevant today as when they were given over three thousand years ago in fact they're so relevant that the ten commandments are all that is necessary to make a good world a world free of tyranny and cruelty imagine for

a moment a world in which there was no murder or theft in such a world there would be no need for armies or police or weapons men and women and children could walk anywhere at any time of day or night without any fear of being killed or robbed imagine further a world in which no one coveted what belonged to their neighbor a world in which children honored their mother and father and the family unit thrived a world in which people obeyed the injunction not to lie the recipe for a good world is all there in

these ten sublime commandments but there is a catch the ten commandments are predicated on the belief that they were given by an authority higher than any man any king or any government that's why the sentence preceding the ten commandments asserts the following god spoke all these words you see if the ten commandments as great as they are were given by any human authority then any person could say who is this man moses who is this king or queen who is this government to tell me how i should behave okay so why is god indispensable to

the ten commandments because to put it as directly as possible if it isn't god who declares murder wrong murder isn't wrong yes this strikes many people today as incomprehensible even absurd many of you are thinking is this guy saying you can't be a good person if you don't believe in god let me respond as clearly as possible i am not saying that of course there are good people who don't believe in god just as there are bad people who do and many of you are also thinking i believe murder is wrong i don't need god

to tell me now that response is only half true i have no doubt that if you're an atheist and you say that you believe murder is wrong you believe murder is wrong but forgive me you do need god to tell you we all need god to tell us you see even if you figured out murder is wrong on your own without god and the ten commandments how do you know it's wrong not believe it's wrong i mean no it's wrong the fact is you can't because without god right and wrong are just personal beliefs personal

opinions i think shoplifting is okay you don't unless there is a god all morality is just opinion and belief and virtually every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this another problem with the view that you don't need god to believe that murder is wrong is a lot of people haven't shared your view and you don't have to go back very far in history to prove this in the 20th century millions of people in communist societies and under nazism killed about 100 million people and that doesn't count a single soldier killed in war so don't get too confident

about people's ability to figure out right from wrong without a higher authority it's all too easy to be swayed by a government or a demagogue or an ideology or to rationalize that the wrong you're doing isn't really wrong and even if you do figure out what is right and wrong god is still necessary people who know the difference between right and wrong do the wrong thing all the time you know why because they can they can because they think no one is watching but if you recognize that god is the source of moral law you

believe that he is always watching so even if you're an atheist you would want people to live by the moral laws of the ten commandments and even an atheist has to admit that the more people who believe god gave them and therefore they are not just opinion the better the world would be in three thousand years no one has ever come up with a better system than the god-based ten commandments for making a better world and no one ever will i'm dennis prager what is the first of the ten commandments it might seem like an

odd question but it's not jews and christians give different answers the reason is that what we know as the ten commandments is in the original hebrew the ten statements and since the hebrew is the original we begin with the first statement which all religions agree is i am the lord your god who took you out of the land of egypt out of the house of bondage this statement is so important that none of the other commandments make sense without it first it asserts that god is giving these commandments not moses and not any other human

being second god is the one who delivered you from slavery again no human being did this not even moses therefore you have an obligation to me god and what is that obligation that you live by the following nine commandments this is the beginning of what is known as ethical monotheism the greatest world-changing innovation of the hebrew bible it means two things ethical monotheism means that the one god that's monotheism is the source of ethics of morality morality an objective code of right and wrong does not emanate from human opinion it emanates from god and therefore

transcends human opinion the other meaning of ethical monotheism is that what god most wants from us is that we treat other human beings morally none of the ten commandments concern what humans must do quote unquote for god pre-ten commandments religions all believe that people must do a lot for their gods for example feed them and even sacrifice people to them but now thanks to the ten commandments mankind learned that what god wants is that we be good to our fellow human beings even the commandments concerning not having false gods and not carrying god's name in

vain are ultimately about morality the thing we can do for god is to treat all his other children decently every parent can relate to this parents or at least healthy parents have indescribable joy when they see their children act lovingly toward one another and indescribable pain when they see their children hurt one another so too god who is likened to our father in heaven cares most about how we treat other human beings all of whom are his children the third critical teaching of the first statement i am the lord your god who took you out

of egypt out of the house of bondage is the importance and the meaning of freedom note that god is not saying in this introduction to the ten commandments that he created the world it surely would have made a lot of sense for god to introduce the ten commandments with this statement i am the lord your god who created the world that is after all pretty impressive and would make sense i created the world you better listen to me but no the one thing god declares is that he took the children of israel out of slavery

and into freedom that's how much god hates slavery and how important god considers freedom the founders of america based their entire view of america on this belief that god wants us to be free that is why the most iconic symbol of the american revolution the liberty bell has only one sentence inscribed on it a verse from the hebrew bible proclaimed liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof but there is one other equally important lesson about freedom imparted by the opening statement of the ten commandments what freedom means the giver of the ten

commandments is in effect saying i took you out of slavery and into freedom and these ten commandments are the way to make a free society you cannot be a free people if you do whatever you want freedom comes from moral self-control there is no other way to achieve it and fourth and finally by telling us that he liberated the hebrew slaves god made clear that he cares deeply about human beings it is impressive to create the world but what most matters is not only that there is a creator but that the creator cares about his

creation all of that is in the one statement with which the ten commandments begins i'm dennis prager let's discuss the second commandment according to the oldest that is the jewish enumeration of the ten commandments in christian tradition it's the first commandment the most common translation begins you shall have no other gods performing the commandment then goes on to prohibit both making idols and worshipping idols most people when they think of this commandment understandably think that it only prohibits the worship of idols and the worship of gods such as the ancient pagan gods of reign of

fertility all the other nature gods and chief gods such as the roman jupiter and the greek zeus however there is a major problem with this understanding of the commandment since no one today worships these gods let alone worships idols made of stone most people think that this commandment is irrelevant to modern life the irony however is that this commandment is not only relevant to modern life it is in many ways the mother of all the other commandments why is it so relevant today because today we have as many false gods as the ancients did and

why is it the mother of all the other commandments because if we identify false gods and avoid worshiping them we will eliminate one of the greatest barriers to a good world false gods so let's begin by defining a false god the point of biblical monotheism is that there is only one god and that only this god the creator of the universe who demands that we keep these ten commandments is to be worshipped why first because one god means one human race only if we all have the same creator or father as it were are we

all brothers and sisters second having the same parent also means that no person or group is intrinsically more valuable than any other and third one god means one moral standard for all people if god declares murder wrong it is wrong for everyone and you can't go to another god for another moral standard when anything else is worshipped bad things result not only things that can obviously lead to evil such as the worship of power or race or money or flag but also things that are almost always seen as quite beautiful such as art or education

or even love yes any of these often wonderful things when worshiped can lead to terrible results take art many of the cruelest humans in history loved beautiful music and art but as a music lover i learned early in life the sad fact that great music can be used to inspire people to follow evil just as much as it can be used to inspire people to do good the great hollywood director stanley kubrick vividly made this point in his classic 1971 film a clockwork orange in it men rape and murder while classical music plays in the

background take education we all recognize how important education can be from preparing people to be able to find work to understanding the world but education in and of itself divorced from the higher ends of god and goodness can lead and often has led to great evil many of the best educated people in germany supported hitler in the nazis and almost all of the western world supporters of the genocidal regimes of stalin and the soviet union and mao and china were highly educated there is nothing about a phd that guarantees a person will be wiser kinder

or more ethical than someone with only a high school education the same holds true even of love love of course is so often beautiful but it too can lead to evil in the 20th century people who put love of country above love of god and goodness often committed terrible evil and here's a test for you imagine that the pet you love and a stranger a person you don't know and therefore could not possibly love are drowning do you first try to save your pet or the stranger well if love is an end in itself you

save your pet but if you hold human life as a higher value than love you won't follow love this commandment made the ethical revolution of the bible and of the ten commandments what is known as ethical monotheism possible worship the god of the ten commandments and you will make a good world worship a false god no matter how noble sounding and you will end up with a world of cruelty i'm dennis prager is there such a thing as the worst sin one sin that is worse than all the others well there is i am well

aware that some people differ they maintain that we can't declare any sin worse than any other to god a sin is a sin is how it's often expressed in this view a person who steals a stapler from the office is committing as grievous as sin in god's eyes as a murderer but most people intuitively as well as biblically understand that some sins are clearly worse than others we are confident that god has at least as much common sense as we do the god of judaism and christianity does not equate stealing an office item with murder

so then what is the worst sin the worst sin is committing evil in god's name how do we know from the third commandment of the ten commandments this is the only one of the ten commandments that states that god will not forgive a person who violates the commandment what does the commandment say it is most commonly translated as do not take the name of the lord thy god in vain for the lord will not hold guiltless meaning will not forgive whoever takes his name in vain most people understandably think that the commandment forbids saying god's

name for no good reason so something like god that i have a rough day at work today violates the third commandment but that interpretation presents a real problem it would mean that whereas god could forgive the violation of any of the other commandments dishonoring one's parents stealing adultery or even committing murder he would never forgive someone who said god did i have a rough day at work today let's be honest that would render god and the ten commandments morally incomprehensible well as it happens the commandment is not the problem the problem is the translation the

hebrew original does not say do not take it says do not carry the hebrew literally reads do not carry the name of the lord thy god in vain one of the most widely used new translations of the bible the new international version or niv uses the word misuse rather than the word take you shall not misuse the name of the lord your god this is much closer to the original's intent what does it mean to carry or to misuse god's name it means committing evil in god's name and that god will not forgive why not

when an irreligious person commits evil it doesn't bring god and religion into disrepute but when religious people commit evil especially in god's name they are not only committing evil they are doing terrible damage to the name of god in our time there is an example of this the evils committed by islamists who torture bomb cut throats and mass murder all in the name of god do terrible damage to the name of god it is not coincidental that what is called the new atheism the immense eruption of atheist activism followed the 9 11 attacks on america

by islamist terrorists in fact the most frequent argument against god and religion concerns evil committed in god's name whether it is done in the name of allah today or was done in the past in the name of christ people who murder in the name of god not only kill their victims they kill god too that's why the greatest sin is religious evil that's what the third commandment is there to teach don't carry god's name in vain if you do god won't forgive you i'm dennis prager many people who revere the ten commandments don't think that

the fourth is particularly important let alone binding once you understand it however you will recognize how life-changing even world-changing the sabbath commandment is and you will begin to appreciate how relevant it is to your own life the fourth commandment reads remember the sabbath day to keep it holy six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a sabbath to the lord your god on it you shall not do any work neither you nor your son or daughter nor your male or female servant nor your animals nor any foreigner residing

in your towns why is this so important first perhaps more than any other commandment it elevated the human being how so for nearly all of human history life consisted overwhelmingly of work in effect humans were beasts of burden this commandment and only this commandment changed all that by insisting that people cease working one day out of seven second more than any other commandment the sabbath day reminds people that they are meant to be free as the second version of the commandment the one summarized by moses in the book of deuteronomy states remember that you were

slaves in egypt in other words remember that slaves cannot have a sabbath in light of this i might add that in the biblical view unless necessary for survival people who choose to work seven days a week are essentially slaves slaves to work or perhaps to money but slaves nonetheless the millionaire who works seven days a week is simply a rich slave third while the bible could not universally abolish slavery the sabbath commandment greatly humanized that terrible institution and even helped make slavery impossible by definition a slave owner was under no obligation to allow a slave

to ever rest let alone to rest one day every week yet that is exactly what the fourth commandment commanded even a slave has fundamental human rights therefore a slave to is a human being fourth the sabbath almost single-handedly creates and strengthens family ties and friendships when a person takes off from work one day every week that day almost inevitably becomes a day spent with other people namely family and or friends it has similar positive effects on marriages ask anyone married to a workaholic how good it would be for their marriage if the workaholic would not

work for one day each week and you can appreciate the power of the sabbath day fifth the sabbath commandment granted animals dignity even one's animals had to rest one day a week it is to the best of our knowledge the first national law in history on behalf of animals and its benefits to animals surely went beyond a mandatory day of rest for them people who felt divinely obligated to give their animals a day of rest were much less likely to treat their animals cruelly any day of the week now all five of these life-changing and

society-changing benefits of the sabbath are available to anyone you don't have to be a jew a christian or even a believer in god to derive all these benefits but the reality is that those who believe the ten commandments were given by god are the ones who have kept the sabbath alive the god factor plays another role in the sabbath just as faith in god brings people to the sabbath observing the sabbath brings people to faith in god that is why the first version of the ten commandments the version in the book of exodus ends with

these words for in six days god made the heavens and the earth the sea and all that is in them but he rested on the seventh day therefore god blessed the sabbath day and made it holy however you interpret six days and many jewish and christian believers do not translate days as 24-hour periods the point is this every time you keep the sabbath you are affirming that there is a creator that the world didn't just happen that life isn't some meaningless coincidence but that it is infinitely meaningful and therefore each of us has a unique

significance and purpose not bad for one day a week no wonder that the sabbath is one of the ten commandments no wonder that those who have it in their lives are often happier with richer family lives more serenity a community of friends and yes or even healthier you might want to give it a try i'm dennis prager the fifth of the ten commandments reads honor your father and your mother this commandment is so important that it is one of the only commandments in the entire bible that gives a reason for observing it that your days

may be long in the land that the lord your god is giving you many people read that part of the fifth commandment as a reward but while it may be regarded as a reward the fact remains that it is a reason if you build a society in which children honor their parents your society will long survive and the corollary is a society in which children do not honor their parents is doomed to self-destruction in our time this connection between honoring parents and maintaining civilization is not widely recognized on the contrary many of the best educated

parents do not believe that their children need to show them honor since honoring implies an authority figure and that is a status many modern parents reject in addition many parents seek to be loved not honored by their children yet neither the ten commandments nor the bible elsewhere commands us to love our parents this is particularly striking given that the bible commands us to love our neighbor to love god and to love the stranger the bible understands that there will always be individuals who for whatever reason do not love a parent therefore it does not demand

what may be psychologically or emotionally impossible but it does demand that we show honor to our parents and it makes this demand only with regard to parents there is no one else who the bible commands us to honor so then why is honoring parents so important why does the ten commandments believe that society could not survive if this commandment were widely violated one reason is that we as children need it parents may want to be honored and they should want to be but children need to honor parents a father and a mother who are not

honored are essentially adult peers of their children they are not parents no generation knows better than ours the terrible consequences of growing up without a father fatherless boys are far more likely to grow up and commit violent crime mistreat women and act out against society in every other way girls who do not have a father to honor and hopefully to love as well are more likely to seek the wrong men and to be promiscuous at an early age second honoring parents is how nearly all of us come to recognize that there is a moral authority

above us to whom we are morally accountable and without this we cannot create or maintain a moral society of course for the ten commandments the ultimate moral authority is god who is therefore higher than even our appearance but it is very difficult to come to honor god without having had a parent especially a father to honor zigman freud the father of psychiatry and an atheist theorized that one's attitude towards one's father largely shaped one's attitude toward god there's one more reason why honoring parents is fundamental to a good society honoring parents is the best antidote

to totalitarianism one of the first things totalitarian movements seek to do is to break the child parent bond a child's allegiance is shifted from parents to the state even in democratic societies the larger the state becomes the more it usurps the parental role finally there are many ways to honor parents the general rule is this they get special treatment parents are unique so they must be treated in a unique way you don't talk to them in quite the same way you do anyone else for example you might use expletives when speaking to a friend but

you don't with a parent you don't call them by their first name and when you leave their home and make your own you maintain contact with them having no contact with parents is the opposite of honoring them and yes we all recognize that some parents have behaved so cruelly and i mean cruelly not annoyingly that one finds it morally impossible to honor them there are such cases but they are rare and remember this if your children see you honor your parents no matter how difficult it may sometimes be the chances are far greater that they

will honor you i'm dennis prager you would think that of all the ten commandments the one that needs the least explaining is the sixth because it seems so clear it is the one that the king james bible the most widely used english translation of the bible translates as thou shall not kill yet the truth is quite the opposite this is probably the least well understood of the ten commandments the reason is that the hebrew original does not say do not kill it says do not murder both hebrew and english have two words for taking a

life one is kill in hebrew and the other is murder in hebrew the difference between the two is enormous kill means one taking any life whether of a human being or an animal two taking a human life deliberately or by accident three taking a human life legally or illegally morally or immorally on the other hand murder can only mean one thing the illegal or immoral taking of a human life that's why we say i killed a mosquito not i murdered a mosquito and that's why we would say the worker was accidentally killed not the worker

was accidentally murdered so why did the king james translation of the bible use the word kill rather than murder because 400 years ago when the translation was made kill was synonymous with murder as a result some people don't realize that english has changed since 1610 and therefore think that the ten commandments prohibits all killing but of course it doesn't if the ten commandments for bad killing we would all have to be vegetarians killing animals would be prohibited and we would all have to be pacifists since we could not kill even in self-defense however you don't

have to know how the english language has evolved in order to understand that the ten commandments could not have prohibited all killing the very same part of the bible that contains the ten commandments the five books of moses the torah as it is known by jews commands the death penalty for murder allows killing in war prescribes animal sacrifice and allows eating meat a correct understanding of the commandment against murder is crucial because while virtually every modern translation correctly translates the commandment as do not murder many people cite the king james translation to justify two positions

that have no biblical basis opposition to capital punishment and pacifism regarding capital punishment and the bible the only law that appears in each one of the five books of moses is that murderers be put to death opponents of the death penalty are free to hold the view that all murderers should be allowed to live but they are not free to cite the bible to support their view yet many do and they always cite the commandment do not kill but that as should now be abundantly clear is not what the commandment says and it is therefore

an invalid argument as regards pacifism the belief that it is always wrong to kill a human being again anyone is free to hold this position as immoral as it may be and what other word than immoral can one use to describe forbidding the killing of someone who was in the process of murdering innocent men women and children in let's say a movie theater or a school but it is dishonest to cite the commandment against murder to justify pacifism there is moral killing most obviously when done in self-defense against an aggressor and there is immoral killing

and the word for that is murder the ten commandments are portrayed on two tablets the five commandments on the second tablet all concern our treatment of fellow human beings the first one on that list is do not murder why because murder is the worst act a person can commit the other four commandments prohibiting stealing adultery giving false testimony and coveting are all serious offenses but murder leads the list because deliberately taking the life of an innocent person is the most terrible thing we can do the next time you hear someone sight do not kill when

quoting the sixth commandment gently but firmly explain that it actually says do not murder i'm dennis prager there's an old joke about the seventh commandment do not commit adultery moses comes down from mount sinai and announces i have good news and bad news the good news is that i got him down to 10. the bad news is that adultery stays the joke is telling the prohibition on a married person having sexual relations with anyone except his or her spouse may be for many people the most consistently difficult of the ten commandments to observe the reasons

shouldn't be hard to guess one is the enormous power of the sex drive it can be very hard to keep in check for the entirety of one's marriage especially when an attractive outsider makes him or herself sexually or romantically available another reason is the human desire to love and be loved for normal people there is no more powerful emotion than love if one falls in love with someone while married it takes great effort not to commit adultery with that person and if we add in the unfortunate circumstance of a loveless marriage adultery becomes even more

difficult to resist that's why the joke with which i began is funny because it reflects truth why is adultery prohibited in the ten commandments because like the other nine it is indispensable to forming and maintaining higher civilization adultery threatens the very building block of the civilization that the ten commandment seeks to create that building block is the family a married father and mother and their children anything that threatens the family unit is prohibited in the bible adultery is one example not honoring one's father and mother is another and the prohibition on injecting any sexuality into

the family unit incest is a third example why is the family so important because without it social stability is impossible because without it the passing on of society's values from generation to generation is impossible because commitment to a wife and children makes men more responsible and mature because more than anything else family meets most women's deepest emotional and material needs and nothing comes close to the family in giving children a secure and stable childhood and why does adultery threaten the family the most obvious reason is that sex with someone other than one spouse can all

too easily lead to either or both spouses leaving the marriage adultery should not automatically lead to divorce but it often does there is another reason adultery can destroy a family it can lead to pregnancy and then to the birth of a child that child will in almost all cases start out life with no family meaning no father and mother married to each other to call his or her own and if adultery doesn't destroy a family it almost always does terrible harm to a marriage aside from the sense of betrayal and loss of trust that it

causes it means that the adulterous partner lives a fraudulent life when a husband or wife is having sex with someone other than their spouse their thoughts are constantly about that other person and about how to deceive their spouse the life of deception that an adulterous affair necessarily entails inevitably damages a marriage even if the betrayed spouse is unaware of the affair finally the commandment prohibiting adultery doesn't come with an asterisk saying that adultery is okay if both spouses agree to it spouses who have extramarital sex with the permission of their husband or wife may not

necessarily be hurting their spouse's feelings but they are still harming the institution of marriage and protecting the family not protecting spouses from emotional pain is the reason for the commandment many marriages sadly are troubled and it is not for any of us to stand in judgment of others behavior in this realm no one knows what goes on in anyone else's marriage and if we did we might often well understand why one or the other sought love outside the marriage but no higher civilization can be made or can endure that condones adultery that is why it

is prohibited in the ten commandments i'm dennis prager a good case can be made that the eighth commandment do not steal is the one commandment that encompasses all the others how does do not steal encompass the other commandments well murder is the stealing of another person's life adultery is the stealing of another person's spouse coveting is the desire to steal what belongs to another person giving false testimony is stealing justice and so on this commandment is unique in another way it is the only commandment that is completely open-ended all the other commandments are specific the

fifth commandment for example states that it is our parents whom we should honor the sixth commandment prohibiting murder is about taking the life of an innocent human being the seventh commandment prohibiting adultery is also specific to a married person two unmarried people cannot commit adultery but the commandment against stealing doesn't even hint at what it is were forbidden to steal which means that we cannot take anything that belongs to another person and that in turn means three big things first and foremost the commandment against stealing has always been understood to mean that we are not

allowed to steal another human being what we call kidnapping that is why no one who had even an elementary understanding of the eighth commandment could ever use the bible to justify the most common form of slavery the kidnapping of human beings and selling them into slavery critics of the bible argue that the bible allowed slavery but the type of slavery described was in almost all cases what was known as indentured servitude the selling of oneself to another person for a fixed period of time in order to work off a debt this had nothing to do

with kidnapping free people such as was done in africa and elsewhere that was expressly forbidden by the eighth commandment the second significant meaning of the commandment against stealing is the sanctity of people's property just as we are forbidden to steal people we are forbidden to steal what people own it has been shown over and over that private property beginning with land ownership is indispensable to creating a free and decent society every totalitarian regime takes away private property rights in the ancient and medieval world a few rich people owned all the land and the majority of

the population worked on that land for the enrichment of the owners and then in 19th century europe many socialists argued for taking away private property and giving it to the quote-unquote people where that advice was followed in what came to be known as the communist world theft of property quickly resulted in theft of freedom and ultimately massive theft of life the third enormously important meaning of the commandment against stealing concerns the many non-material things each person owns their reputation their dignity their trust and their intellectual property let's quickly run through these one a person's reputation

stealing a person's good name whether through libel slander or gossip is a particularly destructive form of theft because unlike money or property once a person's good name has been stolen it can almost never be fully restored two a person's dignity the act of stealing a person's dignity is known as humiliation and humiliating a person especially in public can do permanent damage to what is perhaps the most precious thing any of us owns our dignity three a person's trust stealing a person's trust is known as deceiving someone in fact in hebrew a term for tricking someone

is nevada which literally means stealing knowledge one example is tricking people into buying something as when a real estate agent omits telling a prospective purchaser all the flaws in a home in order to make a sale another example would be when someone deceives another person with insincere proclamations of love in order to obtain material or sexual favors 4. a person's intellectual property this form of theft includes anything from copying software or downloading music and movies without paying for them to stealing a person's words what we know as plagiarism stealing a life a person a spouse

material property intellectual property a reputation dignity or trust there is hardly any aspect of human life that is not harmed sometimes irreparably so by stealing that is why it is fair to say that if everyone observed only one of the ten commandments observing the commandment do not steal would all by itself make a beautiful world i'm dennis prager the ninth of the ten commandments is you shall not give false witness against your neighbor this means two things do not lie when testifying in court and do not lie period remember in order for an action to

be prohibited or demanded in the ten commandments it has to be fundamental to making civilization as important as donkey riding might have been when the ten commandments were given the ten commandments contains no commandment to ride your donkey responsibly a society can survive bad donkey drivers but it cannot survive contempt for truth whether inside or outside a courtroom if people testify falsely in a courtroom there can be no justice and without even the hope of justice there can be no civilization the hebrew bible was so adamant on this subject that the punishment imposed on a

witness who gave false testimony was the same as the punishment that would have been meted out to the accused had the false testimony been believed in the case of a crime that would be punishable by death therefore the false witness was liable to be put to death but the commandment is clearly concerned with truth generally not only in a courtroom both the great 12th century jewish commentator ibn ezra and one of the most influential biblical scholars of the 20th century brevard childs of yale university agreed that the commandment was about truth-telling generally as childs pointed

out if the ten commandments were solely concerned with truth and falsehood in a courtroom it would have added words such as in court there are many important values in society but truth is probably the most important goodness and compassion may be the most important values in the micro or personal realm but in the macro or societal realm truth is even more important than compassion or kindness virtually all the great societal evils such as african slavery nazism and communism have been based on lies there were slave traders nazis and communists who were compassionate in their personal

lives but all of them told and most of them believed some great lie that enabled them to participate in a great evil black slavery was made possible in large measure by the lie that blacks were innately inferior to whites the holocaust would have been impossible without tens of millions of people believing the lie that jews were inherently inferior to so-called aryans and communist totalitarianism was entirely based on lies that's why the soviet union's communist party newspaper was named pravda the russian word for truth because the party not objective reality was the source of truth there's

only so much evil that can be done by individual sadists and sociopaths in order to murder millions vast numbers of otherwise normal even decent people must believe lies mass evil is committed not because a vast number of people seek to be cruel but because they are fed lies that convince them that what is evil is actually good however one big obstacle to truth-telling is that believers and causes including good causes that don't place truth as a central value will be very tempted to lie on behalf of their cause there are many examples in the 1980s

for example to promote the cause of the homeless the leading activist on their behalf claimed that there were two to three million homeless in the united states years later he admitted on national television that he had to come up with a number and made that one up the real number was between two hundred and fifty thousand and three hundred and fifty thousand similarly groups in the fight against cancer were caught greatly exaggerating the number of women who get breast cancer each year why in order to frighten more women into getting mammograms again lying on behalf

of a good cause why is lying on behalf of good causes destructive because if we don't know what's true how and where do we know how to properly allocate society's limited resources and in the worst cases it distorts society's priorities and therefore does great harm the ten commandments is there to warn all of us that with very few exceptions such as the immediate saving of innocent life no cause is more important than truth-telling the ten commandments is the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society but such a society cannot be created

or maintained if it is not based on truth i'm dennis prager in the ten commandments commandments six seven eight and nine are the ones that prohibit acts of evil murder adultery stealing and perjury and then there is one commandment that prohibits the thing that leads to murder adultery stealing and perjury which one is it it's the last of the ten do not covet anything that belongs to others not their spouse their house their servants their animals or any of their property in order to understand this commandment and its unique significance the first thing to understand

is that this is the only one of the ten commandments that legislates thought all the other commandments legislate behavior in fact of the 613 laws in the five books of moses virtually none prohibit thought why then does the ten commandments include a law that prohibits a thought because it is coveting that so often leads to evil or to put it another way coveting is what leads to violating the preceding four commandments the ones against murder adultery stealing and perjury think about it why do people do those things in most instances it's because they covet something

that belongs to another person obviously that is the reason people steal thieves covet their victims property but it is also the reason for many murders and coveting is obviously the reason for adultery wanting the spouse of another person as for perjury or bearing false witness in the language of the ten commandments that is done in order to cover up all these other crimes that are caused by coveting but in order to understand why coveting is the one thought that is prohibited in the ten commandments and one of the only thoughts prohibited in the entire hebrew

bible we need to understand what coveting means and equally important what it doesn't mean to covet is much more than to want the hebrew verb lachmud means to want to the point of seeking to take away and own something that belongs to another person note that there are two operative elements here seeking to own and belongs to another person seeking to own does not mean just envying or in the case of your neighbor's spouse just lusting after neither envy nor lost is prohibited in the ten commandments uncontrolled envy and lust can surely lead to bad

things and they can both be psychologically and emotionally destructive but neither one is prohibited in the ten commandments why because neither is the same as coveting it is coveting that almost inevitably leads to stealing to adultery and sometimes even to murder let me explain this in another way the tenth commandment does not prohibit you from saying wow what a great house or car or spouse my neighbor has i wish i had such a house or car or spouse that may end up being destructive but it may also end up being constructive how it may spur

you to work harder and improve your life so that you can obtain a house or car or spouse like your neighbors it is when you want and seek to gain possession of the specific house car or spouse that belongs to another that evil ensues and that is what the tenth commandment prohibits therefore one of these ten commandments these ten basic rules of life must be that we simply cannot allow ourselves to covet what belongs to our neighbor whatever belongs to another person must be regarded as sacrosanct we cannot seek to own anything that belongs to

another because only evil can come of it i'm dennis prager you