Exodus20chapter 20

The Sabbath commanded in this chapter is the practice a Christian reader meets most often in the Gospels. This site's own note on Exodus 31 describes what the day became: a covenant sign guarded by a detailed body of rules, which the Mishnah itself called mountains suspended by a hair. The same note carries the saying of the later tradition that the day is given into human hands rather than the reverse. It also records that one Sabbath may be broken to save a life so that many may be kept. Rashi puts the weekly practice in a sentence at verse 9. When the Sabbath comes, he says, a man should look on his work "as though all thy work were done", and think about it no further (Rashi on Exodus 20:9:1). At verse 10 he reads the naming of the son and the daughter as the parents' duty to keep small children from work on the day (Rashi on Exodus 20:10:1).

Rashi holds that the words were spoken together before they were spoken apart. God said all of them "in one utterance", which no man can do, and then repeated the first two by themselves (Rashi on Exodus 20:1:2). He counts the opening declaration among the commandments, naming it and the prohibition of other gods as those first two. At verse 1 he reads the divine name used there as the name of the Judge, so that these words carry punishment rather than reward alone (Rashi on Exodus 20:1:1). At verse 6 he weighs the two measures against each other. Punishment is threatened to four generations and mercy kept for thousands, which he reckons as a proportion of one to five hundred (Rashi on Exodus 20:6:1). At verse 8 he reads the remember of this chapter and the observe of Deuteronomy as one utterance heard twice (Rashi on Exodus 20:8:1). One caution belongs on these references. The corpus numbers the verses of this chapter as a Hebrew Bible numbers them, and the two counts part company after the Sabbath commandment. Rashi on Exodus 20:13:1 comments on the words about adultery, which an English Bible numbers 20:14. Rashi on Exodus 20:15:1 comments on the people seeing the thunder, which an English Bible numbers 20:18. The text is the Rosenbaum and Silbermann Rashi of 1929 to 1934, in the public domain.

The rabbis take up the speaking of the words at Bamidbar Rabbah 11:2 and 11:7. On the graven image they taught at Avodah Zarah 43b:6, and on the jealous God at Avodah Zarah 54a:4. On the oath taken in vain they taught at Avot DeRabbi Natan 26:2 and Beitzah 15b:4. On the Sabbath of the household they taught at Bava Kamma 54b:12 and 54b:13, and on the honouring of father and mother in Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4. On the altar of earth and the ban on hewn stone they taught at Avodah Zarah 42b:19 and Ein Yaakov, Zevakhim 6:2.