It must strike the modern man as
strange that the Ten Commandments end with a prohibition against coveting,
something which is neither criminal nor punishable in any society, including
ancient Hebrew society. We understand all right the Commandments against stealing
and adultery-acts which are punishable in nearly all legal systems, including
ancient Israel's. But no one has ever proposed that people be jailed or fined
for coveting, as long as it has not led to actual theft of the other fellow's
property or adultery with the other fellow's wife. In fact, we can go farther.
Coveting is recognized as necessary for success in modern society. A man who
does not want to raise his standard of living to that enjoyed by the other
fellow is considered ambitionless, and as such reprehensible. To be sure, if
coveting results only in unconstructive greed, ostentation, or pushiness (e.
g., "keeping up with the Joneses"), and therefore entails an unseemly
response to the potentially desirable stimulus of coveting, it may be frowned
upon. But when coveting impels us to greater effort, so that we may rise
constructively toward the level of our more affluent neighbors, we are on the
path that universally leads to approbation. Why, then, does the Bible make a
great issue of coveting, grouping it with such evil offenses as murder?
I
Much of the Old Testament was
prompted by the opposition of the Hebrew leaders to the usages of their
neighbors. Sometimes those usages were immoral to the extent that they still
appear immoral to us, e. g., child sacrifice, sacred prostitution, and carnal
relations with animals. But sometimes they appear rather innocent; cf. the
prohibitions against making a statue of any living creature, against
masquerading, and against cattle performing any work on the sabbath (Deut. 5:8;
22:5; 5:14). Can any of us wax indignant over Abraham Lincoln's statue in
Washington, or a children's Halloween party, or a horse taking his master to
church on the sabbath? The principle involved is clearly enunciated in
Scripture many times. For example, "According to the deeds of the land of
Egypt where ye have dwelt ye shall not do; nor shall ye do according to the
deeds of the land of Canaan whither I am bringing you, nor shall ye go by their
usages" (Lev. 18:3). This is the key to solving the problem before us.
We may formulate as a principle
that opposition to alien customs is at work whenever the Hebrews make a great
issue over something that is not recognizable as wrong. There was a time when
biblical scholars had to formulate principles without any outside controls.
This led to a theoretical approach to Scripture with results that were
subjective and therefore often erroneous. We are now in a more advantageous
position because of extra-biblical sources unearthed by archaeologists working
in the Near East. For understanding the Old Testament, by far the most
important literary texts ever discovered are the clay tablets from Ugarit,
written between the fourteenth and twelfth centuries B.C. at a north Syrian
coastal city and in a language closely related to Hebrew. The Ugaritic myths
and epics are a kind of Canaanite Bible, portraying the culture against which
the Hebrews rebelled. For instance, a great heroine called Pughat disguised
herself as a man and wielded a sword to exact blood revenge. The honored place
given in Ugaritic literature to wearing the clothes of the opposite sex and to
the use of weapons by a woman explains the strong opposition to these usages in
the Bible (cf. Deut. 22:5).1 Again, the death penalty for copulation with
cattle (Exod. 22:18) becomes readily intelligible when we read in the sacred
myths of Ugarit that the great god Baal mated with a heifer. Baal was the most
popular god in Canaanite religion and was therefore the object of revulsion
among the spiritual leaders of Israel. Hence, anything ascribed to Baal,
whether abominable or innocent, is likely to be condemned in Scripture.
II
With this introduction we are
prepared to understand the commandment against coveting. Baal is described as
coveting tauromorphic creatures with "horns like bulls." The word
used is hamad, "to covet," exactly as in the Ten Commandments.
This Ugaritic text (#75) has been known since 1935 when it was published by the
French cuneiformist Charles Virolleaud. I am now reading proof on the fourth
revised edition of my Ugaritic Textbook for the Pontifical Biblical Institute
in Rome. To help me bring it up to date, Professor Virolleaud has
generously placed at my disposal the proof sheets of his forthcoming volume of
newly discovered Ugaritic texts, Palais royal d'Ugarit V. In the very
first text of this important book, Baal is described as coveting (the same word
hamad is used) in a context mentioning fine agricultural terrain. It is
no accident that the Bible specifies the bull and the field of our neighbor as
objects that we must not covet, for these are precisely what Baal covets in the
two texts just mentioned.
One of the main scenes in the
religious texts of Ugarit is the story of how Baal obtained a house. He
complained that "he had no house like the (other) gods, nor a court like
the the Sons of Asherah," which means in plain prose that he coveted the
houses of his neighbors. Instead of sulking in silence, Baal behaved like a man
destined to succeed. He bestirred himself and in the end secured a superb house
built of the finest materials by the greatest of all architects. The scene of
"The House of Baal" constitutes a major part of Ugaritic literature.
Apparently the emphasis upon it prompted the biblical author to begin the
commandment in Exod. 20:17 with "Thou shalt not covet the house of thy
neighbor."
Moralists may make of the tenth
commandment what they will. They can say that if we do not covet, we will not
embark on the path that leads to theft and adultery. If coveting could be
detected and treated as crime, the commandments and laws against stealing and
adultery would be superfluous. But this is not the case. Biblical and modern
laws provide penalties for theft and adultery. But the Bible could not punish
coveting because it comprises a universal aspect of human behavior that no
court of law - whether in ancient Israel or in the modern West- can stop.
However, what we can now do is to understand why coveting - though not immoral
or illegal - is included as a prohibition in the Ten Commandments. Whatever had
an honored place in Baalism is likely to be condemned in Scripture. This is a
principle repeatedly expressed in the Bible, but one which we can now for the
first time control because of the materials placed in our hands by archaeology.
(Cyrus H. Gordon, “A Note on the Tenth Commandment,” Journal of Bible and
Religion 31, no. 3 [July 1963]: 208-9)
