Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Exo
20:3)
Commenting
on this commandment in the Decalogue, Jan Assmann wrote:
Tellingly, God does not say that there is no
other gods besides him. On the contrary, such gods exist, but Israel is
forbidden from having anything to do with them. In the words of Benno Jacob, “the
gods are not denounced as ‘idols,’ nor are other nations dissuaded from
following them. All that matters here is the relationship between YHWH and
Israel, and YHWH takes Israel into his heart: “you are mine! No-one else’s! I betroth
myself to you forever! It is the image of a marriage
that lies behind this expression [i.e., “no other gods,” J.A.]. Whatever the
circumstances may be, the wife belongs to one
man alone. For her, everyone else is
an ‘îš ‘aḥēr. This is not to say that
there are no other men out there, only that they do not exist for her” (Jacob, Das Buch Exodus, 555).
In the first commandments we have before us
the central tenet of biblical monotheism. It is not a statement of the “monotheism
of truth,” which denies the existence of other gods. Instead, it explicitly
attests to the “monotheism of loyalty.” When referring to this form of an
exclusive commitment to God, some scholars therefore prefer to speak of “monolatry”
rather than “monotheism.” By this they mean the exclusive (or “monogamous,” to
stick with Jacob’s metaphor) worship of a single god that simultaneously
acknowledges the existence of other gods. The problem with this terminology,
however, is that it obscures the fact that we are dealing here with a
completely unique conception in the history of religion. Monolatry may crop up
here and there, and Israel’s exclusive worship of YHWH may indeed have arisen
from original monolatry. But there is an absolutely crucial additional factor
in play here: the covenant theological foundation. What is called for here is
loyalty. The “other gods” do not simply go unheeded when the Israelites turn in
reverence to face their one and only lord; rather, they are expressly prohibited
ad their worship is anathematized as a breach of the covenant. A covenant is
made here between one god among many and one nation among many, and this
covenant is based on an act of salvation that connects the people freed from
Egypt, and this people alone, with the god who freed them, and this god alone. (Jan
Assmann, The Invention of Religion: Faith
and covenant in the Book of Exodus [Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2018], 216-17)
