Answers in the Numbers?

 

Ancient readers asked a question about the Ten Commandments, one that occurs to few people nowadays: Why did the Ten Commandments need to be written on two stone tablets? Surely all ten could have been fitted onto one.

 

One explanation for the necessity of two tablets centered on the fact that, while the Ten Commandments start with matters covering relations “between God and humans,” they conclude with commandments governing relations between one person and another. Both categories were important, so each was accorded its own tablet.

 

But this division potentially posed the problem of asymmetry: the first tablet (between God and humans) would have had only the first four commandments on it, while the second tablet (governing relations between one person and another) would include the last six. It would be nice if this fifth commandment, to honor one’s parents, could somehow be moved into the “man and God” column.

 

Numerous commentators have therefore suggested that this fifth commandment really belongs with the first four, because there is something Godlike about parenthood. Here, for example, is what Philo of Alexandria, the first-century commentator and philosopher, said about the five-and-five division:

 

One set of enactments begins with God, the father and maker of all, and ends with parents, who copy His nature by begetting individual people. The other set contains all the prohibitions, namely, adultery, murder, theft, false witness, and covetousness. (The Decalogue, 50-51)

 

But other scholars looked elsewhere for an answer. The Ten Commandments were, of course, only the beginning of the great revelation of divine law. Ultimately, the Torah was found to contain a total of 613 commandments, and these were intended to guide Israel throughout their generations. A later verse highlights this theme of continuity: “Moses charged us with (the laws of the) Torah, to be passed on to Jacob’s descendants” (Deuteronomy 33:4).

 

The more ancient interpreters considered this verse, however, the more puzzling it seemed. Surely it was God who had commanded the Jewish people to keep the laws of the Torah. Moses had simply the one designated the transmit them to Israel.

 

At a certain point, rabbinic sages considered the word “torah” itself. It is widely known that, by tradition, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet was assigned a numerical value. Altogether this made for a total of 611. Which was too bad! If only the total had come to 613, that would have matched exactly the number of commandments in the Torah.

 

But then our sages noticed something interesting about the Ten Commandments. In the first two commandments, God speaks in the first person, using the words “I” and “Me”: Thus, “I am the Lord your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt…” “You shall have no other gods before Me…” But after the second commandment, God is spoken of in the third person, “He” and “His.” Why the switch?

 

As the Torah relates, after God had begun speaking at Sinai, the people went to Moses in a panic. “You be the one to speak to us,” they said, “but don’t let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses tried to reassure them, but they wouldn’t listen: “So the people stood off at a distance, while Moses approached the thick cloud, where God was” (Exodus 20:16-18).

 

If so, then the verse, “Moses charged us with torah, suddenly made sense.” The word torah was used in this verse to hint at its numerical value, 611. God gave us the first two commandments directly, speaking to all the people gathered at Mount Sinai. But because the people were afraid, God thereafter spoke only to Moses. He was thus the one who “charged us with (the number) torah (611), to be passed on to Jacob’s descendants.”

 

Shabbat shalom!