The ten commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are laws for regulating the conduct of one Bronze Age tribe.
When you read them in the context of the Bible stories from which they emanate, these are the underlying reasons and messages behind them:
1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt.
2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything.
3. Do not swear by saying the word YHVH in vain.
4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death.
5. Honour your parents, because you will live longer.
6. Do not kill people, unless God arbitrarily allows you to.
7. Do not commit adultery, because men own their wives.
8. Do not steal things or people owned by your tribesmen.
9. Do not lie to or about members of your own tribe.
10. Do not desire things or people owned by your tribesmen.
These laws are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are not based on universal values of right and wrong, because they were never intended to apply to all people. They were designed to protect the stability and interests of one Bronze Age tribe, specifically because this tribe was set apart from all other people. The first four are arbitrary rules for how this tribe should worship its God. The next six regulate the tribe’s day-to-day conduct, mainly by protecting the position of its adult males, and also by treating members of the tribe differently than strangers. Most of these laws were enforced by the tribesmen stoning lawbreakers to death.
These laws demand unthinking obedience, based only on desire for amazing rewards and fear of horrific punishments meted out by this God. If you obey his laws, you will be his chosen people, and live in a land flowing with milk and honey (Lev 20:24), where a hundred of you will kill ten thousand enemies (Lev 26:3-9). But if you disobey his laws, he will bring upon you sudden terror and wasting diseases, send wild animals to kill your children, make you eat the flesh of your children, and make you so fearful that you will flee even when nobody is chasing you (Lev 26:14-39). He will punish not only you, but also your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren (Ex 20:5).
Regardless of whether you believe this to be literal truth or literary metaphor, it is no basis upon which to build an ethical moral code. This becomes even more evident when you look at the Biblical background to each of these ten laws.
