Hang Ten: Displaying the Ten Commandments

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/15/12—Few documents stir up as much controversy as the Ten Commandments. Few have such an interesting history. The story begins in the book of Exodus and, presumably, will have no ending, since the original source of the commandments will repose in the New Temple in the returned or replaced Ark of the Covenant until the coming of the Messiah. If we are to believe the Book of Revelation, they will not be found on earth, for John tells us that the Ark of the Covenant is already in heaven (Revelation 11:19). The prophet does not say whether it will be returned to the Temple.

My first knowledge of them came in the form of a wall hanging, an 8 x 10 board with a royal blue background and sparkling glitter forming the words of what God would have me do.

The board was a prominent fixture in the Baptist households of Deep Gap, North Carolina. These mandates could be bought for a mere 75 cents, though a version with cherubs flitting in the corners could be had for a quarter more.

I wasn’t required to memorize them, and I puzzled over the seventh, since the word “adultery” was not then a part of my word-hoard. From what I could figure out from the pocket dictionary we had, the seventh didn’t apply to me, so I didn’t worry about breaking it.

My curiosity about them led me to our family Bible and the relevant chapters in Exodus. If I had sat down with Huck Finn to read the account given there, I’m sure he would have prompted me to call it a “stretcher.” For it was pretty far-fetched.

The story asked me to believe that a man of 120 winters could twice tote down a mountain stone tablets with commandments written by the finger of God on both sides. How could that be, I wondered; did God have an extraordinarily hard finger, or had he merely glued a diamond to it before carving his mandates? More believable was how ticked off Moses was that, during his 40-day outing on Mt. Sinai, his people had taken up calf-worship. Who could blame him for slamming the first set of stones to the ground?

Moses would do better by that second set. After all, they embodied God’s covenant with his people, representing a kind of contract extending protection on one side for obedience on the other. Moses gathered gold, silver, bronze, and special woods and linens and then turned the job of fashioning an ark over to a master builder, Bezalel. A highly detailed description of the ark’s construction appears in chapters 26-30 and 36-39. Completed, it featured two cherubs on top and storage space for manna, Aaron’s rod, and the two inscribed stones. The enclosed contents were considered the Holy of Holies, the entire works being known as the Ark of the Covenant.

The ark in time became a venerated fixture of Solomon’s temple. But where it presently is no one seems to know for certain. Was it secretly buried on some mountain in the Holy Land, or was it carried off to Ethiopia by Menelik, son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and placed in safekeeping there?

One story involves a switch Menelik pulled off when he swapped an intended replica given him by his father for the real thing, believing as he did that Solomon had corrupted its site by allowing molten gods inside the Temple. Menelik wanted them to have a sacred housing, a fancy one, to boot.

Having fancy trappings or an elaborate place to hang them or situate them in public buildings and parks doesn’t much matter to people who venerate their function as a moral or spiritual guide.

Driven by a religious fervor to hang them in classrooms, many school boards and even state legislatures have acted to permit, yea encourage, placing them in classrooms, despite the continuing challenge of having the Supreme Court rule against them. In upholding the principle of separation of church and state, to take but one example, the Court struck down a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the commandments in every classroom (Stone v Graham).

Also in Kentucky (McCreary v the ACLU of Kentucky), the Court ruled against posting them in courthouses, acting out of the concern that they promoted a single religion.

But the Court permitted their display in a stone monument on the Texas capitol grounds, expressing the view (Van Orden v Perry) that, as one of 17 monuments erected there, the intent of those erecting it was not to promote a single faith.

No doubt, the most notorious instance involving a public display resulted from the effort of Alabama’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, to present them in some form in the state courthouse. He tried posting them and, later, that move having failed, he had them carved on slabs and placed atop a block of granite, which he set up in the courthouse. Defying a Federal judge’s order to remove it, he eventually lost his office and the stone was carted off.

If displayed in a manner promoting efforts to educate students about the diversity of religions in the nation, the Court has ruled that the Ten Commandments may be posted in classrooms and courthouses.

A sincere effort to study the evolution of them would produce, in many quarters, a surprise or two.

While presenting them to Moses, God proved hard-nosed about at least two: the one about keeping the Sabbath holy; the other about honoring parents. Anyone failing to observe the Sabbath should be put to death (Exodus 14:16), and anyone cursing his parents merited the same fate (Exodus 21:17).

I wonder if even Roy Moore would have gone so far in his obedience to God.

Hanging the Ten Commandments is surely an issue with a long, long life-line, even if they are slightly known and frequently disobeyed. Obviously, that seventh one has done little to keep our national divorce rate under 50 percent.