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Posted December 17, 2004
Another nutball Alabama judge has trotted out the Ten Commandments as the moral basis for American (or maybe just his state's) law. The judge had the famous ancient law embroidered onto his judicial robes and walked out into court, sat down, and proceeded to do law. Unsurprisingly, there were objections. And still, so many Christians wonder why so many non-Christians show disrespect to their religion! Folks, when you have standard-bearers like the current publicity-seeking Circuit Judge, that's what you should expect. The man has unwittingly proved himself a fool of a legal authority and an impious Christian, to boot.
Consider. Take the commandments as they first appear in the King James Version:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Did this yahoo of a judge really print Thou shalt have no other gods before me
on his robe? Last I checked, he was a mere judge, not the traditional deity of the Hebrew peoples. Simply emblazoning this on one's shirt is tantamount to blasphemy, and those who do not see this demonstrate only that they attend to the Word of their God carelessly, and treat the words as totems, not scripture.
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
This does not merely prohibit swearing,
it seems to me. It prohibits the merely formal use of the name of the LORD. Mightn't this mean that those, such as this judge, who trot out the words from Genesis when they may not use those words in their rulings also be engaged in vain speech? (Do they know what vanity means, in this context?) Indeed, pious Christians to this day affirm
rather than say so help me God
when testifying in court. They are following the Second Commandment when they do this. The judge, by displaying the words on his robe, treats the Word
with less seriousness.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Which means, of course, the evening of Friday to Saturday afternoon's end. The idea of a first-day Sabbath has some support in the book of Hebrews, but nowhere else, really. I wonder how a petitioner to the judge's court interprets this issue of the sabbath?
I'm sure the judge has redacted from Genesis, so the explanation would not appear:
Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Most people would find this passage puzzling. But then, that's nothing new. People tend to blank out at weird Biblical passages like this, and forget that they don't understand them. And then they accept whatever interpretation is thrown at them from the pulpit.
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
This is not a commandment so much as a deal. I wonder if the judge regards it a contract. Is it legally binding? If a dutiful daughter gets cancer at age 17, may she sue God in the judge's court?
Thou shalt not kill.
This is a bad translation, I suspect. Elsewhere in the Books of Moses one is instructed to kill witches and blasphemers and such, not to mention sacrificial animals. And the implication of the Books of Moses is that killing animals for food is just hunky dory, so no animal rights position is being laid out here. And wars in those early books are commonly supported by the LORD — so killing human beings is OK when en masse for the right group. The English wording here is horribly vague. If it merely means Do no murder,
then it suffers from the problem of vacuity, instead, since murder is defined as unlawful killing
; to command don't kill unlawfully
is not to say much. Where does the Law draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable killing? More helpful would have been a principle prohibiting, say, the killing of innocent human beings. As it is, the common law and statute law of the American states seem far superior to this old commandment. They are more precise, and open to less lunatic misinterpretation. (I've heard the commandment used to argue against the death penalty!)
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
This, however, is awfully clear. Of course, in few American states is adultery illegal, and in every state where it is illegal by the book, it is legal in effect: just try to prosecute somebody for adultery these days! Of course, the penalties for breaking this law in the days when it was the law of a land differed for men and women; everyone I know now sees this as a vile tradition, but in olden times, killing women adulterers while slapping the wrist (so to speak) of the male adulterer, seemed like plain horse sense. Times change. Laws improve. Equality before the law becomes ideal. (Ancient Hebrew law was not exactly a paragon when it comes to equality before the law; your sex, your property, your ancestors — these all meant way too much.)
Thou shalt not steal.
One could beg a definition of theft
from this passage, too, but this commandment is comparatively clear. One is allowed to take property from another . . . just not without the owner's permission. Right? Proudhon thought he was being clever by declaring Property is theft,
but he was a bit off his nut. It is true that for every owned thing others are deprived of said property. Thus the depriving of ownership — a salient feature of theft — is fine. So there has to be some principle of justice in acquisition as well as in transfer. A sophisticated explanation of proprietary justice is not, alas, to be found in the Ten Commandments. No explanation, as regarding the sabbath. But then, explanatory theory of property is not to be found in American law, much, either. Too bad. We suffer from this lack.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Now here we have a commandment that judges might want to put on their walls. Their whole business rests on adherence to this injunction. This is the one commandment from Genesis that we should unreservedly place all over the court room. Not just on stelae, not just on black robes. Anyone objecting to this on religious
and separation of church and state
grounds would have to be some kind of moron, I'd say. This is a very important injunction.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.
The final commandment reaches inside a person's head and says you may not think about your neighbor's stuff
in a certain way.
I can't think of many American legal principles that have much to do with this odd commandment. (One reason to oppose hate crime
laws is that they venture into this territory.)
Indeed, that's the trouble with most of the Ten Commandments. They are not good legal principles. Only one of the ten nicely summarizes a principle that every court in the land should hold to. Each other requires more explanation, or even revision, or outright chucking. No one in his right mind wants judges getting into the heads of defendants, plaintiffs, and witnesses, so that they don't covet
this or that. Were some act deemed evidence of coveting, or swearing, or worshipping at some alien god's image, well, there's no place in America's legal system for prohibitions of these things. And as far as theft goes, well, I'd like to see the principle spelled out in every government chamber: Do not take other people's property without permission.
Of course, if that prohibition of expropriation were followed, our government would collapse. (Hence most people would redefine stealing
to allow governments to do what individuals and other groups may not. Talk about careful redefinition!)
So, to me the judgment comes easily: any judge who insists on holding the Ten Commandments as applicable in his court deserves to be dismissed immediately. He has forsaken good law for bad law. And he's proven himself a fool for not seeing it.
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