The Tenth Commandment

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.  Exodus 20:17

I thought the devotion for today in Tabletalk magazine was excellent, and I'd like to share these quotations:

"The tenth commandment, which addresses what happens in our hearts and minds, makes clear that the Lord forbids those sins that no one sees -- our covetous thoughts and desires leading us to long wrongfully for what rightfully belongs to others."

"In many ways, covetousness can be seen as the one sin that gives birth to all the others.  Adam and Eve coveted God's knowledge and ate the forbidden fruit in order to make themselves wise, an idolatrous grasp at the Lord's prerogatives.  An adulterer must first want someone other than whom he married before he breaks the commandment.  A thief is envious of his neighbor's estate before he steals his goods.  Voters grow jealous of what other people in a nation have and use the ballot box to "redistribute" wealth.  Corporations covet the dominant position in the market and game the system to create laws that give them competitive advantages at the expense of other companies."


"The answer to covetousness is not the absence of all desire, as in Buddhism, but rather the cultivation of contentment (I Timothy 6:6-10).  It can be a long journey on the way to discovering how to be content in every circumstance, but if we are endeavoring to be grateful to God for every blessing He has given to us, then we will be less inclined to covet that which is not ours."

~taken from Tabletalk Magazine, September 2010