The mosaic covenant

1) What is or was the purpose of this text?

The main purpose of this text was to control the
people of god and give them/us actual written
guidelines to follow and abide by.
It says in exodus chapter 20:20, “Do not be afraid.
God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will
be with you to keep you from sinning.” Moses said
this after he had recited the Ten Commandments to
the Israelites.

2) How did this text relate to the Israelites during

Moses’ time?
We could tell, from the bible, that the Israelites did
not have full trust in God or Moses at this time. They
knew that they were promised through Abraham to
have a fruitful life but were in the desert for 40 years.
Roderick C. Meredith said in his article, ‘The Ten
Commandments’, “The men have lost all their deep
respect for the law because they have forgotten the
very source of all law and authority!”.
I believe that these are two of the reasons why they
were given the Ten Commandments, to abide by
GODS rules and not anybody else’s or theirs, and to
have full trust in the Lord.

3) Is this text still important to Jews today?

Yes it is, however the Jewish people call them the
‘Ten Sayings’. They are used in the Jewish scriptures.
They are written in Hebrew clearly in most
synagogues.
The Jewish people use these as fundamental laws for
how they should live.
4) How does this topic relate to Christians in today’s
society?
As a Christian I believe that Christians do still follow
The Ten Commandments in everyday life.
Here are my views on each of them.
1. When we say we are Christians that means that
we have given our lives to the Lord and we will
follow HIM not any other false gods.
2. In exodus 20:5-6, it says, “You shall not bow
down to them or worship false gods; for I, the
LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the
children for the sin of the fathers to the third and
fourth generation of those who hate me, but
showing love to a thousand generations of those
who love me and keep my commandments.”
3. I believe that many Christians have disobeyed
this commandment. The best way to obey it is to
try your best to keep yourself from saying the
wrong thing and to think before we open our
mouth.
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4. The 4 commandment says to remember the
Sabbath day by keeping it holy. We remembered
it by naming that day (Sunday) and we keep it
holy by going to church.
5. We should always honour our Mother and Father
but some of us as we grow into our adolescent
years we forget this commandment so we should
think before we make any rash decisions.
 6.As Christians we should never say we ‘hate’
someone because hate is a very harsh word and
to commit a murder you would have to really
dislike that person. If you do not like a person
then do not take it into your own hands let God
take care of it.
7. I believe that once you are committed to a
person it is for life on this earth.
8. I believe that those who steal aren’t grateful for
what they have so for us Christians to steal than
I would see it as not being grateful. God has
given us so many things that we can be grateful
for so why should we steal?

9. I know as Christian we try hard to not give false

testimony and tell the truth about most things
but at least once in our life we have given false
testimony which we have not thought twice
about. It is really easy to make up something
that is not true but we should try really hard to
always tell the truth.
10. We should not want what our neighbour has in
his/her life but concentrate on our own life.