Weekly Letter: The Need for the Ten Commandments to Include Self-Evident Commandments

In answer to one questioning the need for the Ten Commandments to include such self-evident commandments as “Thou shall not murder,” – the Rebbe explains in clear terms the critical connection between the laws of two apparently different orders: the first Commandments of the deepest truth about G-d’s Unity (true monotheism) and the other, self-evident elementary injunctions – such as not to murder and not to steal.

By the Grace of G-d                

5722

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Miss

Mattapan, Ma.

Blessing and Greeting:

This is in reply to your letter in which you ask why the Ten Commandments include such self-evident commandments as “Thou shalt not murder,” etc.  

The Ten Commandments unite within them  laws of  two apparently quite different orders: The first Commandments express and reveal the deepest truths about G-d’s Unity (true monotheism); the others, on the other hand, contain such elementary injunctions as “Thou shalt not murder” and “Thou shalt not steal,” which seem self-evident even to the average human intellect.  

However, the truth is that even self-evident’ moral precepts, if left to human judgment alone, without the binding force of Divine Authority and Sanction, can out of self-love be distorted so as to turn vice into “virtue.”

Indeed, interpreting the moral precepts of “Thou shalt not murder “and “Thou shalt not steal,” from the viewpoint of selfish gain, many a nation in the world, as well as many an individual, have “legalized” their abhorrent ends, not to mention that they have “justified” the means to those ends – as has been amply demonstrated, to our sorrow, particularly in recent years.

If by rejecting the Commandments of  “I am G-d”  and “Thou shalt have no other gods”  or even by disassociating them from “Thou shalt not murder” and “Thou shalt  not steal,” the safeguards against bloodshed and theft, even in their most brutal forms, were removed from humanity’s conscience, it is  certainly hopeless to expect safeguards against “Thou shalt not murder!’ and “Thou shalt not steal,” in more “subtle” ways such as the “bloodshed” of character assassination, or the “theft of the mind” (ganeivat da’ at) and the like.

The Ten Commandments emphasize–and experience has fully and repeatedly borne it out–that even the simplest precept of morality and ethics must rest on the foundation of “I am G-d” and “Thou shalt have no other gods” – and only then can their compliance be assured. 

                                                                                                       With blessing,