Exodus 20:13–17

Exodus 20:13 — "You shall not murder." The Hebrew verb here is rāṣaḥ, which is deliberately narrower than the general word for killing (hārag). Rāṣaḥ denotes unlawful, premeditated homicide — the shedding of innocent blood with malicious intent. This distinction is critical: the same Torah that issues this commandment elsewhere authorizes capital punishment (Ex 21:12–14) and permits defensive warfare. The commandment does not pronounce absolute pacifism; it prohibits the private, unauthorized destruction of human life. The underlying premise is theological: humanity is made in the image of God (imago Dei, Gen 1:26–27), and to murder a person is to assault the image of the Creator. As God tells Noah after the flood: "Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind" (Gen 9:6). Murder is therefore not merely a social crime but a sacrilege.

Exodus 20:14 — "You shall not commit adultery." Nā'ap in Hebrew refers specifically to sexual relations between a married or betrothed woman and a man who is not her husband. In the ancient Near East, adultery was primarily framed as a violation of a husband's rights, but Israel's covenant theology transforms the meaning: it is a rupture of the fidelity (hesed) that mirrors God's own faithful love for Israel. The prophets — Hosea most powerfully — will use adultery as the paradigmatic image of Israel's idolatry, so that this commandment carries an overtone of covenant betrayal at the deepest level. The prohibition guards the family as the cell of the covenant community and protects the wife's dignity as a full covenant member, not merely property.

Exodus 20:15 — "You shall not steal." Gānab covers the wrongful taking of any property belonging to another — goods, animals, and (importantly) persons. The same root is used in Exodus 21:16 to prohibit kidnapping, which carries the death penalty, reminding the reader that theft at its most extreme is the theft of another's freedom and personhood. The commandment presupposes the legitimacy of private property while insisting that such property is never absolute: it remains embedded in a community of covenant obligation.

Exodus 20:16 — "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." The Hebrew 'ēd šāqer — "false witness" — is drawn from the courtroom ('ēd means a legal witness). This commandment was born in a world where the primary check on injustice was the testimony of witnesses, and where a lying witness could sentence an innocent person to death, enslavement, or dispossession. The commandment thus protects the entire legal system through which justice flows. Yet the tradition consistently broadened its application to all forms of lying, slander, calumny, and detraction. The neighbor (rēa') mentioned here is the same word used throughout Leviticus 19, which Jesus will quote when he summarizes the Law: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Exodus 20:17 — "You shall not covet." This commandment is structurally distinct from all the others: it does not forbid an act but a desire — tāḥmōd (covet, desire intensely, scheme to possess). This inward movement of the will toward what belongs to another is the root from which all the preceding sins grow. The list is comprehensive: house, wife, male servant, female servant, ox, donkey, "anything that belongs to your neighbor." The deliberate enumeration is not mere exhaustiveness; it constructs the neighbor as a full human being with a whole life — family, home, livelihood — that commands respect. Notably, the wife is listed among persons, not possessions. In Deuteronomy's parallel version (Dt 5:21), she is listed separately from the household goods, with a distinct verb (hit'awwēh, to desire/lust), suggesting even greater attention to her personhood.

The Typological and Spiritual Senses: Read typologically, these commandments point to their own fulfillment in Christ. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:21–28) internalizes each of these prohibitions: murder finds its root in anger, adultery in the lustful look. He does not abolish these commandments; he reveals their full depth. The letter of the Law points to the spirit of charity that must animate it. For the Fathers, the Decalogue given on Sinai is a natural law written into creation — confirmed, not created, at Sinai — and brought to completion in the law of love written on the heart by the Holy Spirit (Jer 31:33; 2 Cor 3:3).

Catholic tradition offers a uniquely integrated reading of these five commandments through two lenses: the interior dimension of sin and the social order of charity.

On the Fifth Commandment: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2258–2330) grounds the prohibition of murder in the inviolable dignity of the human person made in God's image. This becomes the theological foundation for the Church's consistent teaching against abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment (CCC 2267, as reformulated under Pope Francis), and the unjust conduct of war. St. Augustine in The City of God (I.20) was careful to distinguish private killing from that authorized by legitimate authority, but he insists the commandment must govern even the interior will — hatred is a murder of the heart.

On the Sixth Commandment: The Church has always read this commandment in light of the whole of human sexuality ordered to love and life. The Theology of the Body of St. John Paul II recovers the nuptial meaning of the body: adultery is a lie told with the body, a use of the other as object that contradicts the total self-gift marriage demands. The Council of Trent (Session XXIV) grounded the indissolubility of marriage partly in this commandment.

On the Seventh Commandment: CCC 2401–2463 builds Catholic social teaching on this foundation: not only individual theft is forbidden, but structural injustice — unjust wages, fraud, exploitation of the poor — all constitute violations of the commandment's spirit. Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum and Pope John Paul II's Centesimus Annus both appeal to this commandment in defending the universal destination of goods alongside the right of private property.

On the Eighth Commandment: CCC 2464–2513 traces the full scope of the obligation to truth. The Church Fathers, especially St. Augustine (De Mendacio), treated lying as an intrinsic evil, since it corrupts the rational faculty ordered to truth. Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 110) systematized the sins of the tongue — lying, calumny, detraction — all as violations of this commandment.

On the Tenth Commandment: Thomas Aquinas (ST I-II, q. 77) identified covetousness as the root of all sin because it disorders desire itself — the engine of the will. The Church uniquely emphasizes that this commandment requires not merely restraint of external actions but purification of the heart, which only grace can accomplish (CCC 2534–2557). The beatitude "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Mt 5:3) is its positive form.

For contemporary Catholics, these commandments cut against the grain of a culture that consistently privatizes morality and externalizes sin. Three specific challenges deserve attention.

First, the fifth commandment calls Catholics to a consistent ethic of life — not selective outrage. The same theological ground (the imago Dei) that forbids abortion forbids euthanasia, forbids contempt for migrants, forbids indifference to the death penalty. Catholics cannot selectively invoke the commandment for preferred causes.

Second, the sixth and ninth commandments together confront a pornography epidemic that has normalized the lustful gaze Christ explicitly condemns. The Theology of the Body offers not a list of prohibitions but a vision of the human body as sacred — a far more demanding and liberating framework.

Third, the tenth commandment may be the most countercultural of all. In a consumerist economy, covetousness is a virtue — it drives spending, growth, and ambition. The commandment calls Catholics to examine not only what they do, but what they desire: what occupies the imagination at idle moments, what produces envy on social media, what quietly governs life choices. The examination of conscience demanded by the tenth commandment is ultimately an examination of worship: what do I most deeply want?