Jackson: These laws enlighten your thoughts about your relationship with G-d and with humanity. They can help you change and to save the world.
From Chabad.org: The Ten Commandments - Menachem Posner
G‑d created the world with ten utterances. There were then 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and another 10 generations from Noah’s son Shem to Abraham, whose progeny would be saved from Egypt by 10 plagues and go on to accept the Ten Commandments at Sinai. See the pattern there? The entire purpose of creation was to set the stage for the performance of mitzvahs, as represented by the Ten Commandments.
From the Constitutional Rights Foundation: Development of Jewish Law
According to Hebrew teachings, a man named Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt around 1250 B.C. and received the Ten Commandments f rom God. The Hebrews began writing down the commandments and other legal principles. By the sixth century B.C., they were contained in the Torah and eventually became the first five books of the Bible. The written Torah (“teaching”) provided the ancient Hebrew people with a code of religious and moral laws.
Micah: They were in the desert for 40 years. How did they always stick together. Some people when they are angry just walk off and not do the thing they are told to do.
..From: Covenant and Conversation- Yitro- Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks:
The other fundamental question is how to divide them. Most depictions of the Ten Commandments divide them into two, because of the “two tablets of stone”(Deut 4:13) on which they were engraved. Roughly speaking, the first five are about the relationship between humans and God, the second five about the relationship between humans themselves. There is, however, another way of thinking about numerical structures in the Torah.
The seven days of Creation, for example, are structured as two sets of three, followed by an all-embracing seventh. During the first three days God separated domains: light and dark, upper and lower waters, and sea and dry land. During the second three days He filled each with the appropriate objects and life forms: sun and moon, birds and fish, animals and man. The seventh day was set apart from the others as holy.
Likewise the Ten Plagues consist of three cycles of three followed by a stand-alone tenth. In each cycle of three, the first two were forewarned while the third struck without warning. In the first of each series, Pharaoh was warned in the morning (Ex. 7:16; Ex. 8:17; Ex. 9:13), in the second Moses was told to “come in before Pharaoh” (Ex. 7:26; Ex. 9:1; Ex. 10:1) in the palace, and so on. The tenth plague, unlike the rest, was announced at the very outset (Ex. 4:23). It was less a plague than it was a punishment....
Similarly, it seems to me that the Ten Commandments are structured as three groups of three, with a tenth that is set apart from the rest. Thus understood, we can see how they form the basic structure, the depth grammar, of Israel as a society bound by covenant to God as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6)... The first three – no other gods, no graven images, and no taking of God’s name in vain – define the Jewish people as “one nation under God.” ...
The second three commands – the Sabbath, honouring parents, and the prohibition of murder – are all about the principle of the createdness of life. They establish limits to the idea of autonomy, namely that we are free to do whatever we like so long as it does not harm others. Shabbat is the day dedicated to seeing God as Creator and the universe as His creation. Hence, one day in seven, all human hierarchies are suspended and everyone, master, slave, employer, employee, even domestic animals, are free..... So commands 4 to 7 form the basic jurisprudential principles of Jewish life. They tell us to remember where we came from if we are to be mindful of how to live.
The third three – against adultery, theft and bearing false witness – establish the basic institutions on which society depends. Marriage is sacred because it is the human bond closest in approximation to the covenant between us and God. Not only is marriage the human institution par excellence that depends on loyalty and fidelity. It is also the matrix of a free society. Alexis de Tocqueville put it best:
“As long as family feeling is kept alive, the opponent of oppression is never alone.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,
The prohibition against theft establishes the integrity of property. Whereas Jefferson defined as inalienable rights those of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” John Locke, closer in spirit to the Hebrew Bible, saw them as “life, liberty or possession.”[5] Tyrants abuse the property rights of the people, and the assault of slavery against human dignity is that it deprives me of the ownership of the wealth I create.
The prohibition of false testimony is the precondition of justice. A just society needs more than a structure of laws, courts and enforcement agencies. As Judge Learned Hand said, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”[6] There is no freedom without justice, but there is no justice without each of us accepting individual and collective responsibility for “telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Finally comes the stand-alone prohibition against envying your neighbour’s house, spouse, slave, maid, ox, donkey, or anything else belonging to your neighbour. This seems odd if we think of the “ten words” as commands, but not if we think of them as the basic principles of a free society. The greatest challenge of any society is how to contain the universal, inevitable phenomenon of envy: the desire to have what belongs to someone else. Envy lies at the heart of violence.[7] It was envy that led Cain to murder Abel, made Abraham and Isaac fear for their life because they were married to beautiful women, led Joseph’s brothers to hate him and sell him into slavery. It is envy that leads to adultery, theft and false testimony, and it was envy of their neighbours that led the Israelites time and again to abandon God in favour of the pagan practices of the time.
Envy is the failure to understand the principle of creation as set out in Genesis 1, that everything has its place in the scheme of things. Each of us has our own task and our own blessings, and we are each loved and cherished by God. Live by these truths and there is order. Abandon them and there is chaos. Nothing is more pointless and destructive than to let someone else’s happiness diminish your own, which is what envy is and does. The antidote to envy is, as Ben Zoma famously said, “to rejoice in what we have” (Mishnah Avot 4:1) and not to worry about what we don’t yet have. Consumer societies are built on the creation and intensification of envy, which is why they lead to people having more and enjoying it less.
Thirty-three centuries after they were first given, the Ten Commandments remain the simplest, shortest guide to the creation and maintenance of a good society. Many alternatives have been tried, and most have ended in tears. The wise aphorism remains true: When all else fails, read the instructions.
Adam: (regarding the second group of 3) We have to take responsibility for the things we do. We can't do whatever we want. There are limits on what we can do. Like not committing adultery or theft.
From Torah from JTS, "Who Wrote the Ten Commandments", Benjamin D. Sommer:
The Book of Exodus wants us to realize that human beings participated in the creation of the Torah. But it does not want us to be too sure about how far that participation extended. It teaches us that the authority behind the commands that came from Sinai is divine, and thus that all Jews are required to observe Jewish law. But it also suggests that, to some degree, observant Jews of each generation, like those at Sinai, can participate in writing the law. It is in the tension between these two views of tradition and change that the most authentic and ancient form of Judaism dwells.
Miya: In the 10 commandments you have to read between the lines and understand that G-d isn't telling you that these are the only 10 laws. That the words they say are not the only things to follow. You have to put your beliefs and what you think G-d is saying into your daily life.