The Only God of History - Reflections on Ex. 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, 19th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Wednesday, July 8, 2026

         Today’s text includes the famous “ten words,” known more commonly as the Ten Commandments. Nearly 25 years ago, I published a brief book on ways that one might preach from these famously compact, yet obviously powerful, ancient formulations (The Ten Commandments, Abingdon Press 2002). In that book, I urged anyone who felt moved to use these texts as the basis for a sermon not to attempt to cover all of them in one Sunday. They are simply too rich and complex in their articulations to allow one address to explain them all. Hence, I propose today to take my own advice  (as I have done in other essays on Ex.20), and limit my comments to the first of the commands, as it is enumerated in Ex.20:1-2. As we will see, even to call this merely the first commandment is to enter into something of a hornet’s nest of debate.

         It is crucially important to note that the first commandment is in reality no commandment at all! It is a statement, an announcement, a basic commitment to the nature of YHWH, enshrining central claims about just who YHWH is for Israel. In Judaism, the first commandment is only the first clause of Ex.20:2: “I, YHWH, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” It is common in many Christian lists of the Ten to add to this line the second part of vs.2: “there must not be for you other gods over against my face.” That line, for Judaism, is the second commandment, and the other eight are listed accordingly, dividing some others into two to make the holy number of ten. The Westminster list of the commandments does not even include the first part of vs.1, but begins the list with the commandment against honoring other gods. Over the centuries, there have been long debates about just how the famous Ten are to be counted and listed, let alone how they are to be understood and applied. But for our purposes today, I suggest that vs.2a is the basis for all that follows; without a careful acknowledgment and equally careful study of Ex. 20:2a, the rest of the commandments run the risk of being heard merely as laws, legislation that commands followers to obey. That these commandments are far more than that is very important to recognize and celebrate.

         If we are to understand and truly worship this YHWH, we always must remember what precisely this God has done for us, and then anticipate that this God will act in similar ways for us today and in the future. Whatever “do’s” and “don’ts” the Ten announce, they are all nuanced and filtered through the proclamation of this opening verse. Until I know and affirm that YHWH is the God who brought me out of bondage, the Commandments can be reduced to a sterile list of behaviors that I may or may not choose to take seriously. But once I recognize and celebrate the God who is for me, who acts on my behalf, that God’s demands on my life becomes my call to follow this God by living in the ways that God bids me live. In other words, as regularly in the message of the Bible, all divine demands follow the divine gift. Too often, we have heard the laws of scripture apart from the free gift of God, and have assumed that the Hebrew Bible focuses attention on the necessity of following God’s laws to the exclusion of God’s initial gift of freedom for us. Thus, we have reduced the Hebrew Bible to a book of law in contrast to the New Testament’s emphasis on gift and grace. This is a thoroughly false characterization of the biblical message. Grace always precedes demand in both testaments, and here in Ex.20:2 is the proof.

         The first three words of the opening sentence can be read in two ways. I read “I, YHWH, am your God,” in the attempt to capture the slightly unusual Hebrew word order. The pronoun “I” occurs first in the sentence, unlike common Hebrew word order of verb/noun, thus emphasizing the identity of YHWH as Israel’s God. NRSV reads “I am the Lord (YHWH) your God,” which is not wrong, but does not to me place enough emphasis on the central fact that YHWH and no other is the God who has acted for Israel. And that action is the movement for freedom, where God “brings Israel out” of Egyptian bondage. In over 130 instances in the Hebrew Bible, this formula occurs; it is found in 30 of the 39 books of the first testament, making it impossible to overestimate the significance of this special formulation of the nature of this God.

         And the second part of the opening statement in vs.3 sharpens the understanding of the actions of YHWH. “There must not be for you other gods.” That is my translation of the line, but there are other interesting possibilities. One could read “you must not possess other gods,” since the words present one way that Hebrew expresses possession. And there is a third, and rather intriguing option: “You must not become other gods,” also grammatically possible. However one translates, the implication is clear: if one affirms that YHWH is the God who brought us out of slavery, one would be no less than a fool to turn to, or even try to become, other gods.

         Of course, Israel too often and with disheartening regularity turned to other gods! Baal, El, Astarte, Tammuz, the Queen of Heaven, among a host of other options, confronted Israel with choices of divinities who seemed somehow more attractive, more powerful, more able to save or protect or succor Israel at times of distress or anger or terror. The Bible is replete with such choices, and the commandment makes it as plain as possible that such choices are foolish, desperate, and finally useless—only YHWH can save because only YHWH has brought us out of Egypt in the most important moment of our history.

         The final clause of the opening statement is awkward; I have translated “over against my face,” quite literally to provide what I think is the basic implication; to revere other gods is “to fly in the face of YHWH,” directly to go “against” the one who brought you out of Egypt. Perhaps a look at another similar use of this locution might help. In Gen.48:7 Jacob describes the death of his beloved Rachel by saying, “Rachel died to my sorrow (literally “against me”). Jacob says that Rachel’s death diminished him, bringing to him pain and sadness. Thus, we can conclude that when other gods are chosen, YHWH is not only angry, but also feels a sense of diminishment, a frustrating sorrow and loss. Like Jacob, YHWH is simply less without the chosen ones whom YHWH brought out of Egypt.

         Ex.20:2,3 are crucial words that undergird the remainder of the famous Ten Commandments. I very much doubt that these important insights will find their way into many Texas public school classrooms, whose walls are now festooned with the Ten Commandments, or at least some enumeration of those commandments, though hardly the list as I know them. They are on those walls, demanded by the Texas legislature, and the governor who signed the bill, supposedly to provide students with what?—rules for life, demands for Christian living? And what about the Muslims in the classes, or the Hindus, or the atheists? Well, all of that is grist for other mills and other days. For those of us who take the Bible seriously, the first commandment is the key that unlocks the marvelous Ten Commandments, reminding us that the gifts of God always precede the commands of God. How wonderful that insight can be for our ongoing lives of faith.