God did not write 10 Commandments with fingers

THIS WEEK, United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI) celebrates its founders week by honouring its former president, William Wilberforce Watty. Watty, who was born in Dominica, is a Methodist minister. This scholar served the theological college in the 1980s.

I sat at the feet of Watty during Old Testament studies and one of the memorable things of his class was that he would read large portions of the Bible in class. Another feature was his love of comparing the different accounts of the same story in the various gospels. And many preachers will expound on the Lord's Prayer from Matthew 6 while completely ignoring the shorter version in Mark, and make sweeping claims about the Lord's Prayer which would not be applicable if they were reading Mark.

The Ten Commandments is not getting a fair reading and understanding. Therefore, few persons realise that command about the Sabbath has a serious variation between the two accounts in Exodus 20:8-11 and Deuteronomy 5: 12-15. The latter does not mention anything about creation but locates the observance of the Sabbath in the children of Israel's emancipation from Egyptian slavery. The implications of that significant variance are many.

For one, it could mean that God did not literally write the Ten Commandments. If God wrote the Ten Commandments then there could be no difference between the first list in Exodus and the second list in Deuteronomy. It seems more logical to claim that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments.

Figurative language

Furthermore, in anger at the people's sin of idolatry, Moses throws down the tablets and they break into pieces (Exodus 32.19). Do we really believe that Moses would break those tablets on which God had used his own fingers to write?

Nevertheless, some Christians claim, based on Exodus 31:18 that God used literal fingers, "... He gave Moses two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God." The concept of 'the finger of God' is evidently figurative language since God the Father, being utterly Spirit, does not literally have body parts like fingers. This is an anthropomorphism, that is, speaking about God as if He had human attributes so that humans might better understand what is being said. Clinton Chisholm, a biblical scholar who has done extensive research on the Sabbath and a graduate of UTC, states, "A Finger is attributed to God, to connote the putting forth of His formative power, and the direct, immediate or mediate act of God." For him the emphasis in this figure of speech is the ultimate Divine source of a phenomenon or event, even if mediated through a human agent of God. (Exodus 8.19, 31: 18).

Therefore, when the Bible uses 'finger of God' with reference to the tablets of the 10 commandments, it is meant to highlight the Divine source of the 10 commandments.

Furthermore, new tablets are chiselled out by Moses (Exodus 34:1, 4) for God to write again on them but in Exodus 34:27-28 it is seemingly Moses that actually wrote on the new tablets. However, Deut 10:4 says God wrote on the second tablets! Again Chisholm sees no contradiction. It is to claim that what Moses wrote is synonymous to what God wrote because God is the source of whatever is written.

Unfortunately, doctrines and political ideology have been made, centred around the Ten Commandments, including a belief by some that whatever Israel does is correct, including the illegal occupation of parts of Gaza.

Rev Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church in St Andrew. Send comments to columns@gleanerjm.com