Walk into almost any shul wherever one may be, and chances are one will see the “Ten Commandments[1]” on top of the aron kodesh. They are neatly divided into two “tablets” with the first five commandments on the right and commandments six-ten on the left. The first five dibrot are mitzvot between man and G-d with the last five mitzvot between man and man. This is the neat division I would venture to say most of us grew up on and have rarely given it a second thought. But a simple look at the text calls this division into question.
It is pretty much universally accepted to divide the Torah into chapter and verse. Yet the division into chapters is generally believed to have been developed and first used in the 13th century by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. Being that by then the Torah was some 2,500 years old, his division is a relative late comer to Biblical commentary.
The classic Jewish division of the Torah is into units known as parshiot. To indicate the end of a unit of the Torah, a parsha, we have empty space in the Torah[2]. As Rashi (Vayikra 1:10 s.v. v’eem) notes, whenever we arrive at the end of a parsha we are to reflect upon what we have learned before moving on to the next section of the Torah.
Unlike standard paragraphs in a book which tend to be of relatively equal size, a parsha can consist of as little as two words as we find in the aseret hadibrot regarding lo tirzach, lo tinaf and lo tignov or as long as many chapters. An example of the latter is “parshat” Vayetze which has no parsha breaks, indicating Yaakov’s running away from home, arriving at Lavan's home, his marriages and birth of 12 children and leaving Lavan’s home is to be read as one story, whereas the prohibitions of murder, adultery and stealing should each be reflected upon separately.
These breaks thus serve as one of the original commentaries on the Torah[3], indicating which parts of the Torah are meant to be read as one story and which must also be read as separate units.
So important are these breaks in the Torah that if there are missing or even misplaced the Torah is rendered pasul, invalid, and cannot be used for public Torah reading.
What does all this have to do with the aseret hadibrot?
If one looks at the aseret hadibrot one will, not surprisingly, notice they are divided into ten parshiot. While they form a larger unit they must also be reflected upon individually. Yet the division of parshiot is not what we might expect. What we generally call the first two dibrot, “Anochi” and “Lo Yihyeh”, “I am the Lord” and “Do not have other gods”, are included together in the first parsha. This is most logical and helps explain why many understand the opening verse of the aseret hadibrot not as its own dibra but as an introductory statement[4]. Many commentaries do not even count it as a mitzva – this declaration being the basis for all other commandments. If one does not believe in G-d there is no basis for a divine commands[5].
Yet if commandments one and two are really just one we must find another commandment so that we have ten. Perhaps that would be Shabbat with one command relating to the positive mitzvot of Shabbat and one for the negative mitzvot, the 39 prohibited categories of “work”. But a quick look will disabuse us of any notion that Shabbat can be viewed as two separate ideas. A beautiful shabbat meal is meant to go hand in hand with no cell phones, nor checking on the score in the hockey game. The positive and the negative are flip sides of the same coin. Kiddush and challah alone do not a shabbat meal make.
It is the last of the commandment(s), not to covet, that is actually divided into two[6]. The “ninth” commandment states, “Thou shall not covet your neighbour’s house” which is then followed by a parsha break. The Ten Commandments then conclude with the last of the commandments, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's”. Amazing!
What is so special about not being jealous that it warrants two of the aseret hadibrot. Perhaps it’s because it is undoubtedly the hardest of the commandments[7]. It is almost beyond human capacity to not be jealous. As the Ibn Ezra asks, “many are perplexed by this mitzva; how can it be that one will not covet a beautiful thing in his heart?” Yet that is the goal of the Torah – and we are to spend "double the time" thinking about how we might, at the very least, temper our jealousy.
The Ibn Ezra in trying to answer this question, notes that we are not jealous of the birds that fly, a peasant is not jealous of the one who marries the King's daughter and one has no desire to sleep with one’s mother – they being impossible to even imagine (one hopes). So too “the wise one will not be jealous and will not desire…He will be happy with his lot and it will not enter his heart to desire that which is not his, he knows that G-d does not want to give it to him and thus he cannot take it by his own strength, thoughts, or schemes. He will therefore trust in his Creator, that is, that his Creator will sustain him and do what is right in His sight” (Commentary to Shemot 20:14).
This last – or shall we say, these last two – commandment(s) is the corollary of the opening of the aseret hadibrot, the mitzva to believe in G-d. This mitzva of belief consists of what we might call a theological mitzva, a mitzva between man and G-d to believe in G-d. But the mitzva to believe in G-d is also a mitzva between man and man, man being created in the image of G-d.
Jewish law states that a (long) bracha must end with a similar theme as to how it began. G-d blessed us by revealing Himself at Sinai. We begin with belief in G-d and we end with belief in G-d – by not coveting and by not coveting[8]. We must affirm "Anochi" – I am the Lord your G-d and “re’acha”, our neighbour the culminating word of the aseret hadibrot.
[1] The Torah itself never uses that phrase but instead refers to it as aseret hadevarim, the ten sayings or statements (see for example Devarim 4:13). Nonetheless, it is generally taken as a given that each of these statements is a command (and sometimes i.e. regarding Shabbat, more than one command). This is an important point that we will reference below.
Despite its inaccuracy, in keeping with common convention I will often refer to the aseret hadevarim as the Ten Commandments.
[2] A parsha is either a petucha, an open parsha, meaning there is a blank space of nine letters before the next parsha begins, or a parsha setuma a closed parsha where the next unit begins on a new line.
[3] Another pretty much ignored commentary today – one which may date back as far as Sinai – is the ta'amei hamikra, the cantillation of the text. These serve secondarily as musical notes indicating how the words of the Torah should be chanted and primarily as instructions on how to read the verse.
[4] The special cantillation used for the aseret hadibrot, the ta’am elyon, divides the dibrot into ten “verses” each corresponding to one of the Ten Commandments, (as opposed to the 13 verses in actual text itself). The first of the commandments ends not with “Mitzraim” but with "Mitzvotai", the last word of the “second” dibra. Interestingly, what we call commandments five, six and seven, the prohibitions of murder adultery and theft are read as separate dibrot but in the text of Torah all part of one verse.
[5] One might argue that one believes in G-d but not that He took the Jewish people out of Egypt. While many might believe such, the fundamental belief of Judaism is that the G-d of Creation is also the G-d of history.
[6] Just open up any Chumash and note the empty spaces between these “two commands”.
[7] This is not the place to discuss whether the prohibition applies only if one acts on the jealousy or like most assume (based on the tweaked wording of how the dibrot are presented by Moshe 40 years later) one violates this command by thoughts alone.
[8] As to why generally the dibrot are not divided this way we will have to leave for another time
