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About this book

Exodus

About this book

The Ten Commandments and the Covenant

Chapter 20

1 God spoke all these words: 2 “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt,⁠ from the house of slavery.⁠ 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below.⁠ 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me,⁠ 6 and showing covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.⁠ 7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. 9 For six days you may labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.⁠ 12 “Honor your father and your mother,⁠ that you may live a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving to you.⁠ 13 “You shall not murder.⁠ 14 “You shall not commit adultery.⁠ 15 “You shall not steal.⁠ 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.⁠ 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,⁠ nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”⁠ 18 All the people were seeing the thundering and the lightning, and heard the sound of the horn, and saw the mountain smoking—and⁠ when the people saw it they trembled with fear and kept their distance.⁠ 19 They said to Moses, “You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak with us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not sin.” 21 The people kept their distance, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was. 22 The Lord said to Moses, “Thus you will tell the Israelites: ‘You yourselves have seen that I have spoken with you from heaven.⁠ 23 You must not make gods of silver alongside me,⁠ nor make gods of gold for yourselves. 24 “‘You must make for me an altar made of earth, and you will sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where I cause my name to be honored I will come to you and I will bless you.⁠ 25 If you make me an altar of stone, you must not build it of stones shaped with tools, for if you use your tool on it you have defiled it.⁠ 26 And you must not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness is not exposed.’⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 20:5 and Ezekiel 18:2

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Exodus 20 says God punishes children to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers. Ezekiel 18 reverses this, declaring that only the one who sins shall die.

Passages

Exodus 20:5

Hebrew Bible
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me, 6 and showing covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Ezekiel 18:2

Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord’s message came to me: 2 “What do you mean by quoting this proverb concerning the land of Israel: “‘The fathers eat sour grapes, And the children’s teeth become numb?’ 3 “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will not quote this proverb in Israel anymore! 4 Indeed! All lives are mine—the life of the father as well as the life of the son is mine. The one who sins will die.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Ezekiel

References

“... In Exodus 20:4-6 (and the later version in Deuteronomy 5:8-10), false worship merited a punishment extending to the third and the fourth generation. The blessings for obedience will linger to the thousandth generation. Sure, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, which the Bible tends to do a lot when numbers are involved, but the point still sticks: when it comes to worshiping God, obedience and disobedience have multigenerational effects: children are blessed or punished for what their parents did. Remember that the sin that landed the Judahites in exile wasn’t something like stealing or adultery or murder, but the very same topic that occupies the Second Commandment, false worship, which had been sponsored by one dumb Judahite king after another. It’s hard to miss the implication of Ezekiel’s words: God clearly said one thing to Moses in the Second Commandment at the beginning of Israel’s journey, and then God clearly says something different through Ezekiel at the end. ...”
Peter Enns, How the Bible Actually Works (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2019), 78–80.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 20:5 and Ezekiel 18:2

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