The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 45

consoience a yet deeper foundation of these duties than any which human intereats can supply. For the ethical virtues of love, purity, honesty, and truth are in ma.n t.he counterpart of God's own perfections, and all that is contrary to these perfectiona must be, in the nature of things, sinful, because it is the contradiction of his image nnd likeness. 45. (X.) To all these commandments which relate to the natural rights and duties of mnn, one, the tenth and Inst, is added, which enlarges their scope beyond that of all hurnan ln,vs, and marks them ne truly Divine; !awe in which he who is the Lord of the spirit and the conscience must be regarded. Even in human legislation, indeed, the intention of an net is taken into account, and sometimes even the absence of a due sense of the right and of its corresponding duty-as, for example, in the case of manslaughter, the absence of a sense of the value of human life, and of the duty of caring for it-may make an act criminal even though there is no positive intention to commit a crime. But human law can take no cognisance whatever of the inward thought before it is expressed either in word or in deed. To no one but God himself, the Judge of our spirits, can we be accountable for the angry or malicious feeling, tho impure desire, the covetous wish, the deceitful thonght and purpose, all which, as St. Paul discovered when the law came home to his conscience, are included under the general prohibition, "Thou shalt not covet." 1 The desire is manifestly unlawful when that which is desired belongs to another, because by this it is certain tl:mt it is contrary to the will of God that we should possess it; but also, and no less truly, whenever the desire is not regulated by the Divine order, and subordinate to God's will. Such a desire, like that of Eve before she yielded to the tempter," bath of itself the nature of sin," and is the harlot mother, as the apostle James reminds us, of a.II sin and death. 2 46. The proclamation from Sinai of this la,v of the ten commandments is one o.E those events, the vast moral importance of which, as compared with all events in secular history, and indeed with all in sacred history from the Fall to the Incarnation, is, like a great mountain mass the comparative height of which is best distinguished at a distance, realised now that we look back on it through the ages of the past, as it could not be understood at the time when it was first delivered. How little, notwith- standing the awful manifestations of the Divine presence and authority, this law affected the minds of the Israelites at the time, is apparent from the fact that at the foot of Mount Sinai they made and worshipped the golden calf, committing, no doubt unwittingly through the'darkness and blindness of their hearts, the very sin of which the voice of God had pronounced the most express and solemn condemnation. Aml of the spiritual force and meaning of these commandments, 3 although their general conviction that God who gave this law was to be feared is commended by him as in itself good, they evidently had no conception; they had indeed to learn this through the teaching of God's prophets, nnd his dealings with them ns a nation, for many generations, and even to the last they were a foolish people, having eyes that couhl not see, and ears that could not understand. Now, looking back on the majestic scene from the distance of some thirty-four centuries, and interpreting those Divino 1 Both tho English words covet ond lust have, unfortunately, special meanings. In Greek the words ob!' imf!vµ~oEt, forbid every class of evil desire. In the Hebrew a dillercnt word is used in Deuteronomy for desiring tho neighbour's wifo from that employeu for coYct- ing his property. Acco1,ling to Kalisch, the Rabbinical distinction between the two wor,ls WllS that iivah (tho wor,l rendered co-vet iu Deuteronomy) means the first motion of tho evil tlosire, and cham/icl that which is fully ilevolopcd, nnu prouuces the sinful ,lc,,,l. Ilut from tho uso of the words in Deuteronomy we should rather infer the opposite. .2. Seo Alforcl's note on Jamrs i. 14, 15. 3 Cf. Deut. v. 2S, 29.  'l:Xxii lXTRODUCTION TO THl<i l'ENTATEUCH.