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| - I am the Lord your God, or I am Yahweh your God, is the opening phrase of the Ten Commandments, which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Post-Reformation scholars. The Book of Exodus describes the Ten Commandments as being spoken by God to Moses, inscribed on two stone tablets by the finger of God, and later written on tablets by Moses. The Ten Commandments begin: – Exodus 20:2-6 (WEB)
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| abstract
| - I am the Lord your God, or I am Yahweh your God, is the opening phrase of the Ten Commandments, which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Post-Reformation scholars. The Book of Exodus describes the Ten Commandments as being spoken by God to Moses, inscribed on two stone tablets by the finger of God, and later written on tablets by Moses. The Ten Commandments begin: I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. – Exodus 20:2-6 (WEB) According to the Hebrew bible, Yahweh is the personal (proper) name of God that was revealed to Moses in the account of the bush. Many English translations render the Hebrew YHWH as “LORD” or “Jehovah” but modern scholarship suggests that “Yahweh” is a more reasonable English rendering. The introduction to the Ten Commandments establishes the identity of God by both his personal name and his historical act of delivering Israel from Egypt. The language and pattern reflects that of ancient royal treaties in which a great king identified himself and his previous gracious acts toward a subject king or people. Establishing his identity through the use of the proper name, Yahweh, and his mighty acts in history distinguishes Yahweh from the gods of Egypt which were judged in the killing of Egypt’s firstborn, and from the gods of Canaan, the gods of the gentile nations, and the gods that are worshipped as idols, starry hosts, or things found in nature, and the gods known by other proper names. So distinguished, Yahweh demands exclusive allegiance. “I am the LORD your God” occurs a number of other times in the Bible also.
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