Exodus 20: A Comparative Analysis

God’s commandments listed in Exodus 20 can be justified in Genesis; though not obviously stated, God expected his followers to obey the ten commandments before Exodus. Thus, we can assume that God took into account the faults in his earlier covenants and primed his latter covenant involving Moses with these ten policies. In doing so, God expected a more desirable outcome in which the people included in this covenant behaved in God’s preferred manner. God’s Commandments are justified through specific cases in Genesis whose morals mirror that of the Ten Commandments.

To begin, the first commandment can be connected to a story of Jacob in Genesis. We can recall Jacob requesting the people of his household to cease worship of any god that wasn’t

The story explains the murder of Abel by the hands of his brother, Cain, which is immediately followed by God’s obvious anger: “And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brothers blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand”(Genesis 4:10-11). By the tone given off by God, it is clear that he viewed murder as a sin. This reasoning can explain why the sixth commandment was put forth; it states, “You shall not murder”(Exodus 20:13). In Exodus, God remembered that Cain had sinned by murdering his brother and took precautionary measures by declaring the sixth commandment so that the people involved in the covenant knew that it is a sin to commit

Adam and Eve were told by God not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but did so anyways. The event is as follows, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was there with her, and he ate”(Genesis 3:6). Now, the eighth commandment states, “You shall not steal”(Exodus 20) and the tenth commandments says, “You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor”(Exodus 20:17). When analyzing the intentions of Adam and Eve, envy can be concluded. In the basis of the story, Eve is tricked by a serpent to eat the fruit of the tree because she desired to be like God as she was not content just being herself which can be described as envy. As a result, Adam and Eve ate from the one tree belonging to God that were off limits to them; and in doing so, they essentially stole from God. In Exodus, God recalled this act of betrayal and put forth the eighth commandment so Moses and the people of Israel knew not take what is not theirs. God also set the tenth commandment to ensure that the people of the covenant knew not to be envious of those around them and not to desire what