Should the Ten Commandments be displayed on government property? While we believe in keeping the Ten Commandments we also should point out that we are referring to the Ten Commandments as we find them written in Exodus 20 of the Old Testament Bible. Some commandment displays are not true to the biblical blue print. Basically in modern times 3 versions emerged:

The Protestant
The Catholic and
The Jewish

How does the government know which of these versions to display? Some commandment displays have been edited which results in serious theological alterations. Some commandments have been edited and shortened.

The Biblical display of the 10 commandments was inside the ark of the covenant also known as the mercy seat. The commandments condemn sin but the mercy seat provides an escape for the sinner from the consequence of the second death if he chooses to obey God's Word. That is quite a different theological context than displaying them in American government buildings. Worldly governments cannot and do not dispence mercy like God can.

We also should recognise that the only commandments showing some parallels with earthly laws are 3 out of the 10: 6th, `thou shalt not kill', 8th, `thou shalt not steal' and 9th, `don't lie'. Our court system has no parallels to the 1-3, 6th and 10th. At times misguided church people want to enforce the 4th commandment by erroneously making Sabbath into Sunday and enforce Sunday keeping. That is plainly wrong. Can't they read?

The Bible also teaches tolerance to our fellow men and the example of the three friends of Daniel in Babylon prohibits the state to interfere in the religious believes of its people. The Bible also prohibits religious institutions to use the power of the state to influence people's believes, a function only properly accomplished by the Holy Spirit. Before a religion can assume it is called of God to influence the conscience of people who are not among its followers, they need to examine if they themselves are obeying the Word of God. The truth is, that most of Christianity does not obey God in all of His precepts. Today nominal Christians claim to obey God's law and yet go to church on a day not ordained by God. This day is, and increasingly so, will become the test of faith on our Creator God. Laws establishing a false day of worship, are unbiblical and will usher in the end time events. These events are painful but will culminate in the glorious appearing of Jesus and the holy angels returning as he has promised. (This in response to increased radio chatter on such topics as heard in the evening of 8-21-05.)

The people of this country have transgressed God's Ten Commandment laws so obviously for so many years that upholding it as a tradition is merely a wink and not a serious conversion to obey the Words spoken by our Creator God. And so we find that God didn't display His set of tablets for all to see. Why? He wanted them written in our heart, mind and physical being. While we cannot put up memorial stones in city halls, we can post the Law of God in our own homes.

The Biblical Account of Writing the Law: Moses, having been raised in all the wisdom and skills of Pharaonic Egypt meaning that he could read and write Hieroglyphics, lead armies and knew Egyptian law, was chosen to lead Israel out of Egypt and became their first `Supreme Court' judge. [Exodus 18:13-27; Deuteronomy 16:18] The Bible says that God gave to Moses two tables of testimony on which he wrote the law with his own finger, Exodus 31:18. On these God wrote the 10 devarim (words, commandments (dabar). That we read here "two tables of testimony, two tables of stone' is no mere repetition but underscores the nature of the law.

The first set of tablets Moses broke [50] after seeing his people worshipping like the ancient Egyptians did. God instructed him to produce a second set of stone tablets on which he once more wrote the 10 laws. Later, upon arriving at the River Jordan, Israel prepared a large stone on which the law was written also. This stone he was not to smooth with iron tools but he applied a layer of chalk as the writing surface. [Exodus 20:4; 34:4, 28; Deuteronomy 27:2, 3; Joshua 8:31-32] We can therefore assume that the letters of the law were engraved on the tablets while the chalk was still wet. Because of the prohibition to make `any graven image' the faithful Israelites never produced any stone surface with writing on it and that is why such artifacts are, generally, not being found in Israel. One may speculate that the Israelites interpreted this prohibition in their typical stringent way when the original prohibition may have been against Egyptian style pagan imagery and not simple Hebrew letters. However, some seem to claim that at least one Hebrew letter has a questionable origin.

Hebrew is written from right to left, on these tablets, however, it is written like a farmer would plow a field. Start reading at the obverse tablet `Start' marker (First Tablet lower right corner) and follow the direction of the arrow which is in the first column `A' pointed up. Arriving at the top, letter #15, proceed to #16, next look at the reverse tablet column `A', letter #17 and read downward until #31, next comes column `a', #32, followed by column B, #33 (bottom Hebrw Letter `Bet'). Proceed this way until you get to column `e', #31. At this point the writing continues on the `Second Tablet', column `F', #1. Proceed this way until all columns are read. [The letters in #16 are to be read as single letters since the top edge occurs only once but the illustration shows the letters two times.]
The letter `qaf', column `e', is taken to be a split or bridging letter, ½ of it on the first tablet, and the other ½ on the second.
[Adapted with permission from Ewald Metzler. Dr. Metzler has done a great service with his study for those who love to keep the Law of God and learn more about it. We do not claim that all his insights are necessarily based on the very original Tablets of the Law whose appearance may be close to this but not as exact as the author tries to demonstrate. On the other hand he may be just correct in his arrangement of the 10 Devarim.]

Additional Explanations: The author envisions that the Decalogue was written on two tablets, on both sides as well as on the upper edge and was composed of 320 Hebrew letters each of which occupied a square in the manner ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics were sometimes organized in their inscriptions in geometrical squares, mainly to please the eye. Therefore each side of a tablet had 15 x 5 squares = 75 squares plus 2 additionl spacer columns of 30 squares in which only one square contained a letter = 105 squares in total but only 75 letters. In addition the upper edge had 5 squares, each containing one letter, for the reader to continue reading on the reverse side of 105 squares, 75 letters. Adding these letters we get 160 letters for the first tablet. The second tablet again had on one side 80 letters and on the other 80 (75+5+75+5=160). The letter `e' was the last letter of the first tablet, `Qaf', which was repeated on the second tablet sort of like a page number so the reader would know where the writing continued. All in all then we had 160 letters on the first tablet and 160 letters on the second = 320 letters.

The columns labeled with small letters of our alphabet are, according to the author and which seems to make a whole lot of sense, `spacer' or `turning letters' insuring easier readability of the vertical columns. It is also important to note that the author believes that adjacent duplicate or triplicate letters are written only once. So, if a word happened to end with an `a (aleph)' and the next word start with an `a', this `a' would appear only once and it is up to the reader to know how to read such a system.

According to the author the term '10 Commandments' is misleading since in Hebrew it should be '10 Devarim', a graphic concept referring to 10 lines of writing (Here represented by the Latin letters `A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J'. The `turnning letters' don't count. Where each commandment on the tablets starts and ends we shall try to determine later.)

The whole concept of this proposed arrangement of the tablets into 320 letters seems, according to the author, rests on the assumption that the Decalogue was also the first or one of the first Hebrew alphabet lesson books for the Israelites just having come out of a land where hieroglyphics was the apparent prevalent method of writing. As it so happens the Decalogue begins with the Hebrew letter `Aleph', our letter `A'. Intuitively assuming that the next letter `Bet', our `B' would have the next prominent position, the author located it at the beginning of the second column on the tablet as the 33rd letter. Thus all the rest of the tablet surfaces were arranged geometrically in equal sized squares to fit all 320 letters of the Decalogue.

Our challenge is to discover if all the words needed to convey the contents of the whole Decalogue are indeed found on the tablets. Today's off the shelf Hebrew Old Testament Bible shows considerably more letters than 320 for the Decalogue. Even shortening, `same letters', that is shrinking the length of the text mentioned above, still seems to leave out some parts of certain commandments. Our question is, `Was it more important for the original author of the tablet version of the Decalogue to provide the tables of the law in a geometrical, pleasing look or was it more important to make sure all the words which needed to be said were on the tablets? While there are instances of hieroglyphic writing being written in well designed squares on temple walls, in cuneiform literature we have both, squared off tablets (usually numerical in nature), as well as tablets designed in squares or rectangles of various sizes where lines do not go straight through necessarily. For an example click Here!

Two facts seem to be certain:

a) The Decalogue was written in old Hebrew,
b) The tablets had to fit inside the Ark of the Covenant

whose dimensions are known to us [80] laying side by side. These limiting factors we can work with to consider the original appearance of the Tables of the Law of Yahweh.

Since the first 4 commandments contain so many more letters than the following laws, the 4th commandment ends up on the second tablet and the often used adage that the first tablet of the law talks about for us to `love God' and the second for us to `love our neighbour' should we regard the `two tablet theme idea' as a later construction? Therefore, when Jesus refers to these two divisions in Matthew 22:37-40, does he picture these divisions on two separate tablets or just subject wise?

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and prophets."

Reading what Jesus said seems to imply that he talks subject rather than the contents of the physical tablets. What does it mean to love the lord with `all thy soul?' It means with all thy life. The Hebrew word for `soul' means life and not some immortal entity inside human beings like later misguided philosophers try to make it out.

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, is this a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." - Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Richard Price, Oct. 9, 1790

"The association of religion with terror, and its ability to engender fear in the heart of America, in combination with legislation and policy changes that enable expanded powers of government surveillance have ominous implications for the nations religious traditions."

"Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." - Psalm 20:7

[050] The first set of tablets may have been made of precious blue Sapphire (aluminum oxide) stone according to Exodus 24:10. If so, certain prophetic connections become relevant, i.e. From Ezekiel 1:26; 10:1 we learn that the throne of God is described that way and from Numbers 15:38-39 we know that the color blue represents the truth of God, the `commandments of the Lord'. The institution which changed God's law (Dan. 7:25) uses symbolic colors to underscore their power, except the color blue. That is when the prophecy of 2.Thess. 2:3,7 (NIV, "man of lawlessness") becomes relevant for they cannot face up to the truth of God.
[080] The dimensions of the ark of the covenant are given as a rectangular box measuring 2 1/2 cubits long, 1 1/2 cubits wide and high. Assuming the Egyptian royal cubit (1 royal cubit = 20.623 inches, 52.4 cm) was used, the ark measured 131 cm long (4 feet 3 5/8 inches), 78.5 cm wide and high (the height of the Mercy Seat lid not included) and wide. Assuming the thickness of the wood was calculated to be sturdy for long use, we assume it measured around 10 cm in thickness. That leaves us with ca. 110 cm in length and ca. 59 cm in width and height. Since the stone tablets require at least a tiny bit of space for insertion and since they were never meant to be removed and looked at after having been placed inside, and, furthermore, since they were laid side by side, each tablet could have measured ca. 55 cm long by ca. 29 cm wide. Since the Tables of the Ten Commandments were never meant to be removed from the ark, we postulate now that all the writing was incised on the visible surface, none on the edges and reverse side. Since 320 Hebrew letters were required for the writing of the law
[100] What does it mean for God to be jealous? A jealous God shows in a most expressive manner the love of God for his people. He feels for them as the most affectionate husband could for his spouse; who is `jealous' not in a violent or vindictive way but in a good way for fidelity, because He wishes their invariable happiness.
What does it mean when it says, `Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children?' This seems to imply - if the children walk in the steps of their fathers; for no man can be condemned by divine justice for a crime of which he was never guilty, Ezekiel 18. Idolatry, however, is particularly intended, and visiting sins of this kind refers principally to national judgments. By withdrawing the divine protection the idolatrous Israelites were delivered up into the hands of their enemies, from whom the gods in whom they had trusted could not deliver them. This God did to the third and fourth generation, i.e. successively, as may be seen in every part of Jewish history, and particularly in the Book of Judges. And this, at last, became the grand and the only effectual and lasting means in His hand of their final deliverance from idolatry; for it is well known that after the Babylonian captivity the Israelites were so completely saved from idolatry as nevermore to have disgraced themselves by it as they had formerly done. These national judgments, thus continued from generation to generation, appear to be what is designated by the words in the text, Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.
What does it mean to be vindictive? When the protective care of God is withdrawn because people do not seek Him the vindictive power of Satan can rage without reigns over people.
King Saul, the first king of Israel, had a mind and influence capable of governing a kingdom, if his powers and intelligence had been submitted to the control of God, but the very endowments that qualified him for doing good could be used by Satan, when surrendered to his power, and would enable him to exert widespread influence for evil. He could be more sternly vindictive, more injurious and determined in prosecuting his unholy designs, than could others, because of the superior powers of mind and heart that had been given him by God.
As a last resource, God sent His Son, saying, "They will reverence My Son." But their resistance had made them vindictive, and they said among themselves, "This is the heir; come, let us kill Him, and let us seize on His inheritance." We shall then be left to enjoy the vineyard, and to do as we please with the fruit, Matthew 21:33-46.
While men can be cruel and vindictive, or criminally negligent of the solemn responsibilities placed upon them, God does not forget to be gracious to His people. All heaven was interested in the men who were suffering for Christ's sake, and angels were sent to visit the prison. At their tread the earth trembled. The heavily bolted prison doors were thrown open; the chains and fetters fell from the hands and feet of the prisoners; and a bright light flooded the prison, Acts 16:19-40.
A single vindictive feeling indulged may open the way to a train of feelings which will end in murder.