The Ten Commandments: A Commentary

As an Episcopal priest, I was motivated to write this book on the Ten Commandments after a visitation by our Bishop to our parish. The Bishop inquired of the congregation if they thought the Ten Commandments were important. Every hand went up to affirm they were. He then asked if they could name them. No hand was raised. I then undertook to write on the commandments to use for instruction with my parishioners.

The present work is a revision of the original written some time ago. I use Everett Fox’s translation of the Commandments from The Five Books of Moses because it retains the Hebraic quality of the original. In the Forward I discuss the historical and cosmic settings of the Commandments, the analogy of the covenant between God and Israel to marriage, and the divisions of the Commandments. I then list the Commandments with commentary drawn from Rabbinical sources, my own reflections, and illustrate them with pertinent Biblical stories. Throughout, I relate the Commandments to Jesus’ teachings. And finally, in the Afterword I briefly discuss the relationship between Law and Spirit, which has been much debated in the church down through the centuries ever since the Jesus movement moved beyond its Jewish origins into the Gentile world.