The Ninth and Tenth Commandments
What is the ninth commandment?
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God so that we do not scheme to get our neighbor’s inheritance or house, or get it in a way which only appears right, but help and be of service to him in keeping it.
What is the tenth commandment?
You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God so that we do not entice or force away our neighbor’s wife, workers, or animals, or turn them against him, but urge them to stay and do their duty.
With the ninth and tenth commandments we come, at last, to the close of the ten commandments. We can treat these commandments together because both deal with the sin of coveting. The primary difference between these two is simply the object of coveting, whether the neighbor’s house or wife, servants, animals, etc. Up to this point, we’ve approached the commandments with the explicit command and implicit gift always in mind. The gifts of the first table of the law are that God is your God, he has given you his name, and he provides rest through his Word. The gifts of the second table of the law are parents, life, sex, possessions, and a good name. And with the ninth and tenth commandments we can finally add the gift of contentment.
A good biblical example of covetousness and contentedness is 1 Kings 21:1-16, the story of Naboth’s vineyard. At this point in the time of the Kings, both David and Solomon have died and the kingdom is divided into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. After a succession of wicked kings ruling the north, Ahab becomes king and the author of Kings records for us that he “did evil in the sight of the LORD, more than all who were before him” (1 Kgs 16:30). He erects altars to Baal and Asherah, the male and female fertility deities of the Canaanites, and severely persecutes the prophets alongside his queen, Jezebel. Thus, neither Ahab nor Jezebel feared the LORD. After these wicked and perverse rulers enters Naboth, a simple farmer, a vintner, whose land happens to be beside the palace of Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab sees the vineyard of Naboth and imagines it as the perfect spot for his own personal vegetable garden. He offers Naboth a new vineyard elsewhere and the price of the old vineyard in gold, but Naboth won’t budge. Naboth refuses, specifically, because the vineyard is part of “the inheritance of his fathers.” This claim should have ended the discussion because according to the Law of Moses in Numbers 36, the inheritance of one tribe cannot, by law, be transferred or sold to another. While Ahab walks away vexed and sullen, Jezebel schemes to set a gang of “worthless men” on Naboth who will bear false witness against him, stone him to death, and deliver his land into the hand of Ahab the king. Her plan succeeds and after Naboth’s death, Ahab receives his discontented heart’s desire.
After this story, the LORD sends Elijah the Tishbite to condemn Ahab for preying on the weak and the lowly, which in the Old Testament imagination is one of the greatest evils that a person can do. This story serves to highlight the peculiar nature of coveting. Covetousness begins with the eye, inflames the heart, and consummate in the wicked work of the hands. This movement from the eye, to the heart, to the hands we can identify as the ordo peccati (order of sin) in opposition to the ordo fidei (order of faith) that Paul lays out in Romans 10 which moves from the ear, to the heart, to the mouth. The ear is the organ of the saint, whereas the eye is the organ of the sinner. The eye sows lust and discontent in the heart, but the ear creates faith and thankfulness in the heart, and from these fruit is born according to their kind. But the root of all works, whether evil or good, is in the heart. For the Christian, our heart’s desires are rightly ordered only when governed by the Word of God and faith in the heart. In faith, our fear, love, and trust are directed toward God.
For this reason, Luther in his Large Catechism finds a deep synergism between the end of the commandments and the beginning of the commandments. We begin and end the commandments with where our heart is, with faith. Do we fear, love, and trust in God, or do we fear, love, and trust in ourselves? Where is our trust? Do we trust in God’s word that he will provide for all our needs or do we trust in what our eyes see?
Applied to everyday life there is probably no greater age for discontent and therefore coveting. With the heightened pressures of society through media and mass marketing, discontent is sown in us every waking moment. If covetousness is a sin of the eye first, then all the things that we consume with our eyes, whether entertainment, media, advertisements, etc., have the potential to work discontent in our hearts. Whether the object of discontent and coveting is someone’s house, lifestyle, job, power, authority, or status, covetousness strikes us from every side by what we see in our neighbors. The power of our modern age is that we have never been able to see our neighbor so often and intimately than presently with modern technology. This is not to say that modern technology is evil, but rather that we are evil. Blaming the machine pardons the man, and the issue of sin is always the man.
With all this said, we should also clarify that it is not evil to want things or have desires for the good gifts of God. God himself commands us to pray for these things, to ask him for blessings, and to seek out those things needful for life and its enjoyment. The distinction, perhaps, between pious desires and coveting is when the desire comes at the expense or to the detriment of the neighbor. Is the desire oriented by the love of neighbor toward his good?
Prayer: Heavenly Father, you open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living creature. Cause us to fear and love you above all things, that our hearts would not covet that which you have given to our neighbors. Rather, lead us to trust in your provision of daily bread, be content with what you provide, and reject every evil scheme or enticement that would secure for ourselves that which you have given to others. Enable us to serve our neighbors by helping them to keep and guard all that you have given to them; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
The Close of the Commandments
What does God say about all these commandments?
He says, “I, the LORD, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
What does this mean?
God threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore, we should fear his wrath and not do anything against them. But he promises grace and every blessing to all who keep these commandments. Therefore, we should also love and trust in him and gladly do what he commands.
To close the commandments, Luther here reminds us of the force or function of the law. To quote our Lutheran Confessions, the law, “always accuses and condemns.” It is the ministry of death by which God holds the whole world captive to sin and punishes sinners according to his great and terrible wrath. According to the law we will never obey God or love God, but with only God’s word of law we cannot help but hate God, rebel against him, and continually sin. While the law might be capable of reforming the external behavior of man, it can never change his heart. The law is not and never has been a means to salvation. It is and always has been the means that God kills and damns. “By works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin,” writes St. Paul, “But rather the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ… for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Therefore, “We hold that one is justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law.” This righteousness of God and faith is what we will be turning to with the Apostles’ Creed.
