(To see the latest snapshot of our work in progress, scroll to the end of this post, or click here.)
While all previous commandments have been filed under “love the Lord”, this week’s installation of the greatest commandments sees our first commandments derived from “Love your neighbor” golden commandment.
Honor the elderly
Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:32
Summarized as “honor the old and the wise”, the 11th commandment to be mapped commands us to show respect for our elders, including the specific commandment to rise in the presence of the elderly – a commandment not honored by observant Jews, Messianics, or Christians, to my knowledge.
As we store this information in each commandment, it’s worth noting this is our first commandment in which none of these groups keep this commandment in its literal form. While Christians, Messianics, and Orthodox Jews certainly honor the elderly, all these groups do not literally keep this commandment as far as I’m aware. I’m certain there are exceptions among all groups, but generally speaking, this commandment is not kept in its literal form.
(If you fine blog readers know otherwise, correct me in the comments.)
For now, I’m deeming “Honor the elderly” as deriving directly from “love neighbor as self”, though I suspect that will change as we introduce other commandments related to loving your neighbor.
Teach your children Torah
Commandment #12 really struck a chord with me and called me to action:
Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Deuteronomy 6:7
Impress “them”. What is “them”? The previous verse explains:
These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children.
I deem this commandment as deriving from “keep God’s commandments”.
Cling to God
Similar to “fearing God” commandment from last week is the commandment to cling to God:
Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name.
Deuteronomy 10:20
I’m deriving this one from the “fearing God commandment”.
No adding commandments / No removing commandments
Our last commandments are from a single statement and a single verse in the Torah, Deuteronomy 12:32 (Deuteronomy 13:1 in Hebrew bibles):
See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it.
Deuteronomy 12:32
This is an excellent warning for those religious people that attempt to say that Messiah somehow changed the Torah or modified its commandments in some way. If he had, then he would be breaking the Law – sinning – and would fall under the warning against false prophets, found in the following verses.
The Big Picture
That’s it for this week, fine blog readers. Here’s the current snapshot our our ever-growing commandments hierarchy:
(Click for full size)
Some Nerdly Notes
Probably not too many Messianic programmers out there, but I decided to publicly host the source code and hierarchy generation program that’s used to generate the DOT language file and in turn the image you see above. The project is now open source, hosted on CodePlex: commandments.codeplex.com
You can download the source files yourself, build the project, generate the hierarchy, whatever your geeky, nerdly id desires.
Enjoy!