Seventh Word - Exodus 20:14

20:14 – The seventh word is simple which is “thou shalt not commit adultery.” This one seems pretty straight forward, I mean there is very little that can be misinterpreted. Adultery is a conscious decision to have sex with someone who is not your spouse. It can’t be done on accident, if it is done without consent that that is rape and we aren’t talking about that at all. It is a very deliberate choice to take an action that is expressly forbidden. The IM has several paragraphs about “the covenant of marriage” and “the power of reproduction,” but I don’t feel like it is anything that I haven’t heard a thousand times before. I don’t think there are very many people out there who think adultery is great, despite the fact that probably a significant majority of people do it.

This is a topic that has effected me personally in almost every aspect of my personal and family history, so I’m a little bit jaded about it. Anyway, it’s such an interesting concept because it’s forbidden by God and it is such a destroyer of lives and families but SO many people do it and I just don’t understand why. I mean, I do understand why, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m just really fortunate that my marriage wasn’t abusive, it wasn’t great but it wasn’t abusive. It’s like a poison that everyone drinks. Anyway.

TB has some interesting takes on it, and it’s mostly from a spiritual viewpoint. When he first said, “The union God is talking about in the 7th commandment is PRIMARILY a spiritual union,” I rolled my eyes. Like yes, of course, adultery is a spiritual matter just like every commandment is a spiritual matter but he brought up some interesting points with it. He brings up the point that the scriptures are full of the analogy of the church being married to Christ, and this is true. If we consider all the analogies that Christ uses equating his bride to being the church, it makes sense from that stand point.

TB notes that anciently, the Hebrew marriage tradition was that there was a betrothal or engagement that was almost as legally binding as the marriage itself. He says, “For now just understand that at the moment of betrothal a Hebrew man and woman were treated as though they were married.. a Chethubah, a legal marriage contract, was drawn up and agreed to and it was immediately effective upon betrothal; and an engaged couple could not become Unengaged with a formal legal divorce decree. Unfaithfulness during the betrothal period was considered adultery… All that remained after betrothal for the marriage to be 100% completed was the consummation of marriage, hysical union, which occurred AFTER the ceremonial wedding feast.”

He continues, “we who are Christ’s are currently in a state of betrothal to Him. We are in the marriage PROCESS. Right now, Christ is with us in Spirit, and so we are in union with Him in spirit; but upon the Marriage Feast of the Lamb He will be with us in PERSON, so we will be in union with Him, in person. So eve during our CURRENT, earthly time of betrothal to Christ for us to come into union with something that is forbidden, for us to come into a state of unfaithfulness to Christ, puts us in a state of adultery in our relationship to Christ in Yehoveh’s eyes.”

That was long but I thought it was very interesting how he put together the timeline of ancient Hebrew marriage customs and the anaology of Christ’s marriage feast to the Church. It made a lot of sense to see it fleshed out like that, so while we consider engagements to not really be that big of a deal here in our society, to be engaged can be backed out of without any consequences really, by that thought process, us being engaged to Christ as believers, really doesn’t mean all that much. But anciently, the engagement that us believers have with Christ is legally binding, we are committed to Him but He’s also committed to us, and there’s no backing out of it without significant consequences. So it’s not like we are in some “friendship” or “acquaintance” phase with Jesus where nothing is really that serious. No, it’s all very serious, very real promises have been made on all sides, and He is faithful.

Another aspect of this 7th word that TB noted, really just reminds me that Jesus really is the ultimate champion on women. He noted that while this “adultery” was addressed at the time of Moses, by the time of Christ’s birth, adultery and it’s consequences were purely a female crime, it wasn’t something that a man was charged with. This means the account of the woman taken in adultery makes so much more sense. Because the man was never brought forward for punishment, only the woman, no one even asked about the man. That’s because at this point, the crime and punishment only applied to women.

TB said, “During ALL Biblical times, adultery was considered a PURELY female crime and sin… men were not subject to it. Of course, Christ made clear that that most certainly was NOT God’s view of it and in Leviticus we see that men and women were subject to the same consequences.” This sheds a lot of light on the statements that Jesus made that divorcing a woman causes her to commit adultery, or lusting after a woman is adultery. He never talks about women committing adultery, which of course is still wrong, but maybe He figured women have already been punished enough or blamed enough about it. Ultimately, He took an issue that only women were being demonized for and made sure that the men knew that God found that to be unacceptable. It was pretty radical at the time and probably added onto the reasons why so many men in leadership hated him. If He was to have His way, they wouldn’t have been able to have sex with whoever they wanted anymore. There would have been consequences for their actions, and that would have been too much.

Just to give a few more examples of what “adultery” constituted throughout the ancient Hebrew age, the conviction and punishment for adultery was initially just a man accusing his wife of being adulterous and she would be executed, to around Christ’s time when it took multiple male witnesses and a conviction in court and the punishment ranged from death to public humiliation. TB expands, “Faithlessness of a woman to her union partner in the form of fraternizing with another man or taking another man’s side in a disagreement against her husband, was at time adultery.” So, disagreeing with your husband earned you the death penalty. No wonder Christ’s advocacy for women ruffled so many feathers.