Exodus 20:17 · Passage · Contentment
You Shall Not Covet
Exodus 20:17 is the last of the ten words God spoke at Sinai, and Deuteronomy 5:21 repeats it.
Murder, adultery, theft and false witness are deeds and words, and the tenth commandment goes behind them to the desire where they begin.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, or his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
- The passage
- Exodus 20:17, Deuteronomy 5:21
- Books
- Exodus, Deuteronomy
- Hold in memory
- Exodus 20:17, Hebrews 13:5
Summary
The command lists a neighbor's house, his wife, his manservant and maidservant, his ox and his donkey, and closes on all that belongs to him, so that no possession falls outside it. In the narratives of Scripture the desire it forbids comes before the taking, and the one who covets ends by seizing what belongs to someone else.
- The Hebrew verb of the commandment is chamad, a word for desire that Scripture also uses of good things, so the sin lies in setting it on what belongs to another.
- Deuteronomy 5:21 puts the wife before the house, adds the field, and gives the second clause a second Hebrew verb, avah.
- Paul names this commandment as the one that taught him what coveting is (Romans 7:7).
- Reformed and Roman Catholic teaching part over whether a wrong desire that is resisted is already sin.
The Tenth Word
The tenth word names the neighbor three times, once in each clause and again at its close.
This study of the tenth commandment belongs to the value of contentment, because the commandment forbids the restless wanting of what a neighbor has, which is the discontent that contentment overcomes.
The question this study answers is why the law ends with a commandment about desire, and where that desire leads. It sets the two tellings side by side and follows the Hebrew verb through the garden, Achan's tent and the fields of Micah's day. It then gives the use Paul and Jesus made of the command, and the disagreement between John Calvin and the Council of Trent over a desire the will refuses.
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.God names Himself as Israel's rescuer before He gives any command, so the tenth word is spoken to a people He has already freed.
The ten words, their setting at Sinai and the ways they are numbered have their own study.
Two Tellings of One Command
Moses repeated the ten words to all Israel and said the covenant at Horeb was made with those alive that day.
The second telling keeps every item of the first, moves the wife ahead of the house, names a field and changes the verb of its second clause.
| Part | Exodus 20:17 | Deuteronomy 5:21 | The Hebrew verb |
|---|---|---|---|
| First clause | "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house." | "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife." | Chamad in both |
| Second clause | "You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife," | "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house or field," | Chamad in Exodus, avah in Deuteronomy |
| Servants | "or his manservant or maidservant," | "or his manservant or maidservant," | The verb of the second clause |
| Animals | "or his ox or donkey," | "or his ox or donkey," | The verb of the second clause |
| The close | "or anything that belongs to your neighbor." | "or anything that belongs to your neighbor." | The verb of the second clause |
The Berean text renders both verbs of Deuteronomy 5:21 as covet, so the change shows only in the Hebrew. The first verb, chamad (H2530), is glossed to delight in by the STEP Bible lexicon, and the second, avah (H183), to wish for.
Chamad stands 25 times in the Hebrew Bible, and the desire it names is often good. Psalm 19:10 uses it of the LORD's judgments, "more precious than gold". The commandment forbids it when its object is a neighbor's.
Seeing, Desiring, Taking
Two narratives and a prophet's oracle use the verb of the tenth commandment, and each time a verb of taking follows it.
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, she took the fruit and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.The tree is called desirable with the verb of the tenth commandment, and the woman's taking follows in the same verse.
When I saw among the spoils a beautiful cloak from Shinar, two hundred shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”Achan's confession joins the verb of the commandment to the verb of taking in one sentence.
They covet fields and seize them; they take away houses. They deprive a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance.Micah charges the powerful of his day with the same desire, and their seizing of fields and houses follows it.
Ahab's story runs the same course, though the verb does not stand in it. When Naboth would not sell his vineyard, Ahab went home "sullen and angry" and "refused to eat" (1 Kings 21:4). He went down to take possession of the vineyard only after false witnesses had Naboth stoned (1 Kings 21:13 to 16). So the desire led to the breaking of the ninth and sixth commandments as well.
The Command That Exposes the Heart
Paul and Jesus both read the commandment as a word about the heart.
What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed, I would not have been mindful of sin if not for the law. For I would not have been aware of coveting if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”Paul chose the commandment about desire to show what the law does, which is to make sin known.
In the next verse Paul says that sin seized its opportunity through the commandment and "produced in me every kind of covetous desire" (Romans 7:8).
Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.Paul calls greed idolatry, because the thing desired takes the place that belongs to God.
And He said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourselves against every form of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”Jesus warns against every form of greed and gives the reason the tenth commandment assumes, that life is not measured by possessions.
Jesus gave the warning when a man in the crowd asked Him to tell his brother to divide an inheritance (Luke 12:13). He followed it with the parable of a rich man who built bigger barns.
The commandments “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and any other commandments, are summed up in this one decree: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”Paul sets the command among those summed up in love of neighbor, which is the tenth word stated from its positive side.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, written by English and Scottish divines of the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s, reads the commandment from both sides. It says that the tenth commandment requires "full contentment with our own condition", and that it forbids "all discontentment with our own estate" together with "envying or grieving at the good of our neighbour".
Luke 12:15, Romans 13:9
Teachers on the Tenth Word
Two teachers, of the fourth century and the eighteenth, read the commandment as a word about what the heart wants.
died 397 · Ambrose of Milan
Ambrose of Milan ties the command to greed.
“Love of money then is an old, an ancient vice, which showed itself even at the declaration of the divine law; for a law was given to check it.”
Ambrose of Milan · On the Duties of the Clergy 2.26.130 · on Exodus 20:17Patristic
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
John Wesley put into words the inner voice the commandment forbids.
“O that such a man's house were mine! such a man's wife mine! such a man's estate mine! This is certainly the language of discontent at our own lot, and envy at our neighbour's, and these are the sins principally forbidden here.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament · on Exodus 20:17Evangelical
A Desire the Will Refuses
Calvin and the Council of Trent differ on whether a desire never consented to is itself the sin the commandment forbids.
Both sides agree that the commandment forbids consenting to a wrong desire, and they part over the desire that rises and is resisted.
Calvin and Covetousness Without ConsentJohn Calvin
John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (2.8.49 to 50, in Henry Beveridge's translation), set the design forbidden by the earlier commandments apart from the covetousness of the tenth. He wrote that such covetousness "may exist without such deliberation and assent, when the mind is only stimulated and tickled by vain and perverse objects". He added that this view "was first suggested to me by Augustine".
The objection: James 1:15 says that "after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin", which sets the desire before the sin.
Trent and the Concupiscence of the BaptizedThe Council of Trent
The Council of Trent issued its decree on original sin at its fifth session in 1546. In J. Waterworth's translation of 1848, the decree says that the concupiscence left in the baptized "cannot injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ". It declared that the Church has never understood it to be "truly and properly sin in those born again". The apostle, it said, calls it sin only because it comes from sin and inclines to sin.
The objection: in Romans 7:7 Paul names the coveting itself as the sin the law exposed, before any deed follows it.
Content with What You Have
The tenth word closes the commandments, and a letter of the New Testament names its remedy.
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”The writer sets contentment against the love of money and grounds it in God's promise never to leave His people, so the answer to coveting is the presence of God.
The commandment that ends the ten words asks for a heart at rest with its own portion, and that rest comes from trusting the God who gave it.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Hebrew Old Testament and Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged texts (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG lexicons of Extended Strongs for Hebrew and Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by Henry Beveridge (1845), book 2, chapter 8, sections 49 to 50.
- The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent, translated by J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), the fifth session, decree concerning original sin, paragraph 5, page 24.
- The Westminster Shorter Catechism (the Westminster Assembly, the 1640s), questions 79 to 81.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765), on Exodus 20:17.
- Ambrose of Milan, On the Duties of the Clergy, book 2, chapter 26, section 130.
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