The 9th & 10th Commandments
a sermon by Rev. Michael D. Gladish
for Kitchener, April 3rd, 2005
The ninth of the Ten Commandments is "You shall not covet your neighbour's house." And the tenth is "You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour’s" (Exodus 20:17).
These two commandments are our subject today.
But why the last two without considering the others first? Is there something wrong here in Caryndale? Was I asked to speak on this for some special reason? No! But there is a passage in the Writings (TCR 326) that makes it clear that these two commandments "have regard to" all the others and speak to the internal things that are involved in all the others. Then, too, the list of things not to be coveted is itself most interesting, especially for a modern woman or man. The topic is also fairly deep and challenging, although simple on one level, so I hope you will enjoy learning about it.
The laws against coveting are written together as one, in just one verse of the Old Testament. Some churches actually think of them as one, dividing the first commandment instead, which is quite long and detailed, into two. Either way, most simply, when you think about it you can see that what is said about coveting a house relates to the love of the world, and what is said about coveting all the other things relates to the love of self (AE 1022:2). Thus the two fundamental evil loves of mankind are dealt with here. We’ll come back to this briefly in a moment.
Remember the ninth commandment has to do with "your neighbour’s house." The tenth has to do with the people and things that are IN that house. So the progression from one issue to the next is clear and logical, moving from a general idea of the whole house to the particulars: the wife is in charge, the servants are beneath her, and the animals are of course beneath them. The basic teaching is clear enough: we are not supposed to covet, or crave, or lust for anything that belongs to someone else. In other words, resisting evil actions is not enough, here we see that we must also resist the desires and intentions to do evil because these are the beginnings, these are the sources and causes of our conscious actions; in fact these are the internal elements of the actions, so they can’t be separated and ignored. Therefore the Lord taught that to think a thing – with real desire – is to do it, and in order to stop doing it we must also stop thinking about it. (Of course doing evil is worse for the victims than just thinking about it, but the point is that the will and intention define our own character and so make us guilty whether we actually do the evil or not. The truth is, we would do it if we thought we could get away with it.)
But there are some problems with the details of the application of these laws, especially number ten. For example, how would a woman apply the teaching about not coveting her neighbour’s wife? And what about the millions of people today who couldn’t care less about anybody’s ox or donkey? It really looks as if this commandment were written specifically for an ancient people whose wealth and status may have been measured in such things – and so it was! Today very few of us would even dream of owning an ox.
Beyond the general idea of coveting, then, how can we apply these commandments to ourselves? Shall we substitute other things for which we should control our lusts? For example, if a manservant or a maidservant represents a wealthy lifestyle is it now the lifestyle itself that we should think about in reference to this teaching? Or if a donkey represented transportation in the ancient near-east, should we here today think in terms of our lust for a neighbour’s car?
Maybe. But there is another, better answer. For we are taught in the New Church that every natural thing in the commandments – as in all the Word – actually represents something spiritual. So our job today is to see what spiritual meaning may be in the details of these two commandments.
Are you ready? The ninth commandment tells us not to covet a neighbour’s house. What is the neighbour, and what is a house? We think of a "good neighbour" as someone who gets along well with others, cares about them, shares and helps out when help is needed. So a neighbour in the spiritual sense is any good person, or in a sense abstracted from persons, goodness itself. In general, because a house is where people live, it represents the human mind. In particular it represents the twin faculties that constitute the mind, namely will and understanding. So in this context, the neighbour’s house, the house where goodness dwells, is that part of the human mind called the will.
Now this may seem a little strange at first, but remember, everything in the Lord’s Word represents something in the spiritual world, that is, the world of the mind, and that includes the characters or types, or groups of people that are named there. They all represent states of qualities within the individual mind. So "the neighbour," just as much as any of the other names or classes of people in Scripture, spiritually is a state or quality that we can have within ourselves.
Of course, the neighbour is an individual outside of ourselves, and the Writings even explain that it may be composed of many individuals, thus our community or even our country can be "the neighbour" in a very broad sense. The church, too, and even the kingdom of heaven can be our neighbour. Finally, we read, the Lord Himself is our neighbour in the highest sense, for He is the source and the ultimate standard of all that is good in human society. So when we learn to love the neighbour as ourselves we learn to keep the good of other people - and the Lord - in mind through the course of our daily lives. Therefore in explaining the ninth and tenth commandments the Writings universally speak of not coveting the goods or truths of others. But all these applications still rest on a relatively external level of meaning!
The deeper truth is that the neighbour in a personal or spiritual sense is the good itself that can exist within the mind - our own mind!
Now then, you will surely ask, how can we obey this commandment not to covet the neighbour’s house when it is already something in ourselves? And the answer is very simple. To covet is to lust after, to want or to crave something for one’s self that in fact belongs to someone else. Men do not lust after women just because they appreciate their beauty, nor do they lust after other people’s houses just because they appreciate the architecture. People lust or covet because they want possession, they want ownership, they want the wealth or luxury, the personal comfort, the status or the control that ownership brings. So we covet our neighbour’s house, that is, the will of good that we find within ourselves, when we want to OWN it, when we want to CONTROL it, when we want to take credit for it when really all the credit goes to the Lord who alone is responsible for it.
The Writings teach again and again that if we really believed, as is the case, that all evil comes from hell and all goodness comes from the Lord, we would not condemn ourselves for the former and we would not claim merit for the latter (DP 320). So we would live in peaceful equilibrium.
The problem with coveting, even when we covet the spiritual good we find within our own minds, is that this lust of ownership immediately corrupts everything. No truths or good loves are ours to possess, they are all gifts given to us by the Lord for our enjoyment and use. The purpose is not self-fulfillment, it is self-sacrifice by means of which we experience the fulfillment, that is, the love and wisdom, of the Lord affecting us. So we need to be careful that we don’t just start feeling good about feeling good for its own sake, or craving that sense of fulfillment as the whole point of being useful to others. Sure, the Writings teach that the end or purpose of life in this world is a heaven from the human race, but we must be careful not to think that this means everything revolves around our own personal happiness. The teachings are very clear that a heavenly life involves service to others without thought of reward. On that basis it can be fulfilling for everyone!
So we must not covet our neighbour’s house. But now what about coveting his wife? - or his manservant or his maidservant, or his ox or his donkey, or anything else that is our neighbour’s?
The Writings explain – very sensibly as always – that because this evil relates to people or other living things it involves a latent desire to control or have dominion over them, not from the Lord but from self. Thus it relates to the love of SELF which desires nothing more than to rule over all others.
But the title, "wife" in the Word also has a very specific spiritual meaning based in the first place on the idea of the Lord Himself as a Bridegroom or husband, and the church as His wife. Since the Lord is Goodness itself, whose spiritual partner is truth (and the church teaches this truth), a wife in relation to her husband generally represents the truth of the understanding in relation to what is good.
With this in mind we can begin to see the point of separating the ninth and tenth commandments: the ninth, about the house, relates to the will of good; the tenth, about the wife, relates to the understanding of truth. Neither of these things is outside ourselves; both are things within ourselves, whether we are male or female. And just as we must not covet the good or love that comes only from the Lord, so we must not covet the truth or understanding that comes from His Word, which would be to think of it or crave it as our own (and thus to take credit for it).
Now, men, if you want wives to make yourselves happy, you’re into marriage for the wrong reasons. And women, if you want husbands to make yourselves happy, you’re into marriage for the wrong reasons. But most importantly, men or women, if you covet the truths of faith or any other sort of understanding so as to own it and control it, you’re not into the heavenly marriage at all, you’re into yourselves. This "wife" teaching therefore applies to men and women alike because it’s not just a reference to a natural wife but to the spiritual wife, that is, the understanding that must be an innocent and faithful partner to the will of good in each and every human mind.
It is similar in general with the commandment not to covet the neighbour’s male or female servants. If the house is the good, and the wife is the truth that oversees or manages that good, the servants are all those affections and knowledges that work for and provide for these interior things. Wherever servants are mentioned in the Word, in general this is what they mean: those lower faculties or powers that are subordinate to and serve the higher faculties, that is, the ruling loves or principles within the mind. The male, when he is not cast in the role of a husband, represents the things of understanding; the female, when she is not a wife, represents the things of will. So "manservants" are the ministering truths, not the main principles but the subordinate ideas and teachings, the supportive and confirming facts, in effect all the reasonings that we bring to bear on subjects of our concern. And the "maidservants" are the same sort of ministering affections: not the ruling loves, not the main aims or ambitions, but all the feelings and emotions, the passions and sensitivities, the wants and wishes that help us enjoy life in the daily routine.
Of course we should not covet these affections as we find them in others, to take them away from them or to think we should feel just as they feel. We are all different, created different and unique so that we can find our special place, our special use, our special and individual sense of fulfillment from the Lord. But more importantly, we should not covet the thoughts or affections even of our own minds, as if they should be ours and not the Lord’s in us.
we should not covet these affections as we find them in others, to take them away from them or to think we should feel just as they feel. We are all different, created different and unique so that we can find our special place, our special use, our special and individual sense of fulfillment from the Lord. But more importantly, we should not covet the thoughts or affections even of our own minds, as if they should be ours and not the Lord’s in us.And it is the same again with the commandment about the ox and the donkey, only these are even lower affections and thoughts. As beasts of burden they represent the most external, natural, even physical sensitivities: the ox, big and strong as it is, but pretty much content just to graze and roam about, corresponds to our simple, natural desires. And the donkey, smart and sure-footed but notorious for being stubborn, represents our ability to reason, or at least argue, from the evidence of appearances or natural facts. And again, we can covet the desires and arguments of others, but a more internal sin would be to covet the desires and arguments we find in ourselves, as if even these did not flow in to us as gifts from the Lord, still belonging to HIM.
Remember, the whole concept and real meaning of the word, neighbour, derives from the Lord who is our neighbour in the highest sense. Thus not coveting the things that belong to the neighbour in the final analysis means not craving or claiming for ourselves the goods and truths that are His.
And yet we may have them, and use them freely as if they were our own, provided only that we acknowledge the truth and walk very humbly with the Lord in that acknowledgment.
So in conclusion let’s remember, it’s not wrong to want something for ourselves, but it is wrong to want for ourselves what belongs to another. THAT is coveting, and that cannot be tolerated in heaven. In the natural sense this clearly relates to other people’s possessions, whether they be natural or spiritual goods or truths, but in the deeper spiritual sense it relates to what is the LORD’s, and it is only when we acknowledge that all of life is the Lord’s that we can really honour these two commandments, indeed ALL the commandments, every one of which He has given us as means to teach us this concluding, all important lesson.
Amen.
Lessons: Exodus 20:17 & Micah 6:1-8
Children’s talk on doing justly, loving mercy & walking humbly with God
Luke 12:13-34
Apocalypse Explained 1021:2 & 1022:2
(see also Arcana Celestia 8910 & 8912)
