E20-3: How the Christian church abolished the 1st Commandment of God

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”-Exodus 20:2

In my last post, I showed how the phrase “The 10 Commandments” is actually a mistranslation.

The Hebrew word usually translated into “commandment” is DABAR and it literally means “a spoken word” or “a verbal utterance”.

Some of you may have been wondering ‘What the hell is the big deal?’ because what follows are basically commands or instructions from God.

Well, it is a big deal Charlie.

And here’s the reason why.

What you’ve been taught is the “1ST Commandment” is NOT actually the “1ST Commandment”.

That’s right.

If you’re a Gentile, you’ve probably been taught that the following is the 1st Commandment.

“You shall have no other Gods before me”.

This is wrong.

“Ye shall have no other Gods before me” is actually the second commandment.

The first commandment is the preceding verse which states, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery”.

The early Christian church literally abolished the first commandment of God.

Or sometimes, they add verses 2 and 3 together and incorrectly label these two verses the 1st Commandment.  

Holy smokes man!

How can one know this is true?

The same way one can solve a whole host of other gentile doctrinal errors, by going to the original Hebrew text.

You see, in the original Hebrew, each “commandment” was numbered.

If you look at a Hebrew Bible, in the left hand margin before each so-called “commandment” there is a single Hebrew letter.

In Hebrew, the letters also represent numbers.

And right next to Exodus 20: 2 is the Hebrew letter ALEPH, which stands for number one.

Moving on, right next to Exodus 20:3 is the Hebrew letter BET, which stands for number two.

This pattern continues on until we arrive at the Hebrew letter YOD, which stands for the number 10.

Actually, if you have a copy of the Complete Jewish Bible, go check it out.

You’ll see what I’m saying is true.

Or you can see it online right this very second by clicking here.

So get this straight, right here and right now.

The “1st Commandment” or WORD of God is as follows:

“I am Adonai your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the abode of slavery.”-Exodus 20:2

And the “2nd Commandment” or WORD of God is as follows:

“You are to have no other gods before me”.-Exodus 20:3

Actually, if we want to get even more technically accurate, the “1st Commandment” is really rendered as follows:

“I am YHVH your ELOHIM, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the abode of slavery”-Exodus 20:2

BOTH the Lord’s personal name and His title are in this verse.

Now a common objection raised is “What you are claiming is the 1st commandment doesn’t qualify as a commandment because it’s NOT an instruction.  It’s just an intro statement, so it doesn’t belong in the list of 10 Commandments”.

Okay, so this is where we tie in the information from yesterday’s article (which you can read by clicking here) to today’s post.

God NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, ever calls the content of Exodus 20 “The 10 Commandments”.

As we just studied, His title for this portion of Scripture is “The 10 Words”.

There’s a humongous difference between “WORDS” and “COMMANDMENTS”.

The truth be told, the content of Exodus 20 are principles more than commandments.

The real instructions or commandments of God’s torah are the content to follow.

Now less you think I’m fabricating anything I wrote here, rest assured that ALL of of Hebrew scholarship is unanimous with everything I’ve just written.

There are two very important reasons why we need to acknowledge that the first commandment is “I am YHVH your ELOHIM, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the abode of slavery”.

First, because that is how it has always been in the original Hebrew Holy Scriptures.

Heck, it is even assigned number ONE in the original Hebrew.

That alone should be reason enough.

Second, the real first commandment of God firmly establishes the identity of God’s people as being Israel including the mixed multitude who enjoined themselves to Israel when the Israelites left Egypt.

Now in order to maintain scholarly integrity I do have to let you know that after the Jews were exiled in Babylon, there was a period of time when the list of 10 Commandments was the same as the Christian version today.

This was a time when many of the God-sanctioned Biblical commandments such as Sabbath observance, keeping the 7 Biblical feasts, and ritual washing etcetera were sorely neglected.

However, the original list was reinstated with the proper Biblical first commandment sometime before Yeshua was born.

And ever since, up until today, this has been the list the Jews have observed.

However, the Christians opted to use the version that deletes the very first commandment from the original list of 10 Commandments.

What in the world would be the motive for early Christian leaders to eliminate the 1st Commandment of God?

And why would later Christian leaders adopt this dishonest practice?

We’ll talk about that in the next post.