Tragedy, Edvard Munch, ca. 1898. Minneapolis Institute of Art, Wikimedia
Why is Do Not Covet in the Decalogue?
The Decalogue forbids patently reprehensible acts; but the prohibition against coveting is a potentially victimless offense and is the only one that exclusively addresses men. Moreover, this tenth commandment has no clear parallels in ancient Near Eastern law. An anecdote in a fourteenth-century Hittite text, however, suggests that its roots are in treaty tradition.
Published: May 13, 2026
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Last Updated: October 28, 2026
The full text of the poem is available at “Alexander Pushkin in English Translation,” the Electronic Library.
For a fuller exposition of this note, see Jack M. Sasson, “Another Look at the Tenth Commandment,” in Focusing Biblical Studies: The Crucial Nature of the Persian and Hellenistic Periods: Essays in Honor of Douglas A. Knight, ed. Jon L. Berquist and Alice Hunt, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old testament Studies 544 (London: T&T Clark/ Continuum, 2012), 3–18.
The Hebrew sequence is corrected in the LXX to match those in Exodus and Deuteronomy: murder, adultery, theft, and swearing falsely. To a lesser extent, Hosea 4:2 may also be relevant, giving the following sequence: imprecation, deception, murder, and theft. In Matthew 19:18–19, Jesus cites murder, adultery, stealing, perjury, honoring parents, but also loving neighbors. Paul (Rom 13:9) draws on the last as a summation of all virtues, but lists coveting as one of the forbidden commandments. On these matters, see Christopher Levin, “Der Dekalog am Sinai,” VT 35 (1985): 169–172. K.-D. Schunck, “Das 9. und 10. Gebot—jüngstes Glied des Dekalogs,” ZAW 96 (1984): 104–109, finds thematic correlation between prohibition of theft and coveting and suggests that they belong to the later stages of the Decalogue’s development.
Several monographs on the Decalogue are available, but among those I found the most useful are J. J. Stamm and M. E. Andrews, The Ten Commandments in Recent Research, SBT 2nd Series 2 (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1967), which has a good exposition of (mostly Christian) scholarship, and Anthony Phillips, Ancient Israel’s Criminal Law: A New Approach to the Decalogue (New York: Schocken, 1970). Editor’s note: See also Marc Zvi Brettler, “Ten Insights about the Ten Commandments,” TheTorah (2015).
On this startling suggestion, see Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1982), 11–40. I include this example in a long list of human sacrifices mentioned in the Hebrew Bible; see Jack M. Sasson. Judges 1–12, AB 6D (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 444–447.
In Sasson, “Another Look at the Tenth Commandment,” notes 33 to 39, I cite many instances from Egypt, Ugarit, and Hatti, in myths, epics, wisdom texts, incantations, hymns, and treaty formulations.
Translation follows Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed., SBLWAW 6 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 85.
Occasionally, LH §159 is incorrectly brought into the discussion. There, a man reneges against his marriage commitments upon sighting another woman (ana sinništim šanītim uptallis). In that case, however, there is no indication that the second woman is married or otherwise unavailable.
Translations of Hittite treaties follow Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed., SBLWAW 7 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 32 (No. 3, Treaty between Suppiluliuma I of Hatti and Huqqana of Hayasa).
Beckman Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 84 (No. 12, Treaty between Mursili II of Hatti and Manapa-Tarhunta of the Land of the Seha River); see also No. 11, Treaty between Mursili II of Hatti and Kupanta-Kurunta of Mira-Kuwaliya, 76.
The text of this treaty is published in Jesper Eidem, The Royal Archives from Tell Leilan: Old Babylonian Letters and Treaties from the Lower Town Palace East, Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul 117 (Leiden: Netherlands Institute for the Near East, 2011), 387–406. The stipulation is in column iii. Immensely helpful is Klaas R. Veenhof’s “New Mesopotamian Treaties from the Early Second Millennium BC from kārum Kanesh and Tell Leilan (Šeḫna),” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 19 (2013): 23–57.
Cited, with modifications, from C. Günbatti, “Two Treaties Texts Found at Kültepe,” in Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, ed. J. G. Dercksen (Leiden: The Netherlands Institute for the Near East, 2004), 252. The last clause is wishful, for the Assyrians may not have the facilities to identify the murderer. There is a disturbing story from the Mari archives in which Samsi-Addu receives and executes a person other than the one he was pursuing. No doubt the unlucky victim had been so mutilated before delivery that he could not correct the error. On this matter, see J. M. Sasson, “Scruples: Extradition in the Mari Archives,” in Festschrift für Hermann Hunger, zum 65. Geburtstag gewidmet von seinen Freunden, Kollegen, und Schülern, ed. Gisela Procházka-Eisl (Vienna: Institut für Orientalistik, 2007), 457–458.
On the casuistic and apodictic forms of law, see Dale Patrick, “Legal Rhetoric,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law, ed. Brent A. Strawn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Cited from Günbatti, “Two Treaties Texts Found at Kültepe,” 252. Further details in my earlier publication, Sasson, “Another Look at the Tenth Commandment,” and in Veenhof, “New Mesopotamian Treaties from the Early Second Millennium BC from kārum Kanesh and Tell Leilan (Šeḫna).” The text is also discussed in Kenneth A. Kitchen and Paul J.N. Lawrence, Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East, Part 3, Overall Historical Survey (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012), 60–62.
For an analysis of ancient Near Eastern treaty texts, see Kenneth A. Kitchen and Paul L. N. Lawrence, Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East, 3 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012). Scholars have long noted connections between Deuteronomy and ancient treaty traditions. See the classic study by Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972). Editor’s note: See also Shalom E. Holtz, “YHWH’s Covenant: Why Moses Calls Heaven and Earth as Witnesses,” TheTorah (2024); and Melissa Ramos, “The Making of a Covenant: The Book of Deuteronomy,” TheTorah (2022).
The literature on how best to translate each verse, and on how to calibrate the differences between the relevant verbs, is hirsute; luckily, it is succinctly surveyed by the late Leonard Greenspoon, “Do Not Covet: Is It a Feeling or an Action?” TheTorah (2018).
This observation is noted in traditional Jewish exegesis and picked up by many commentators. The argument of Phillips, Ancient Israel’s Criminal Law, 149, that בַּיִת cannot be a collective “for there is no mention of children, and animals can hardly be reckoned part of the household” is too ingenious and likely specious. Worth noting is that the Greek version reverses the order, first forbidding the wanting of a neighbor’s wife before coveting his house. This order is probably influenced by the sequence in the Deuteronomic recension. We notice that fixed property is inferred in the final phrase of the Exodus variant.
The conjunctions begin with the prohibition against murder (5:20).
This difference in verbs is not present in any other recension, including Qumran’s. For a harmony of diverse readings, see Sidnie Ann White, “The All Souls Deuteronomy and the Decalogue,” JBL 109 (1990): 203–206. Editor’s note: See also Sidnie White Crawford, “The Many Recensions of the Ten Commandments,” TheTorah (2019).
For a tight review of the many opinions on the differences between the verbs, as well as on establishing precedence for one over the other, see Henri Cazelles, “Les origines du Décalogue,” in W. F. Albright Volume, Eretz Israel 9 (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Exploration Society, 1969), 14–19. In traditional Jewish exegesis, however, the debate has not unduly centered on calibrating the distinction between the verbs; rather, it has focused on whether the offense of חָמַד (and to lesser extent הִתְאַוָּה) is about intent, where no damaging wrong is necessarily at stake, or about commission, when offenses are carried out that might require legal redress. For the rabbinic argumentation on either position, see Alexander Rofé, “The Tenth Commandment in the Light of Four Deuteronomic Laws,” and Moshe Greenberg, “The Decalogue Tradition Critically Examined” (especially 106–109), both appearing in Ben-Zion Segal, ed., The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990). Greenberg shows that contemporary scholarship unknowingly rehearses the same issues as raised in rabbinic and medieval literature. The debate within Western scholarship is covered in most responsible commentaries to Exodus and to Deuteronomy, often with bibliography.
Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1–11: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 5 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 316–317, has a good discussion on the difference between חָמַד and הִתְאַוָּה.
It is worth noting, however, that the Septuagint detects no nuance between the verbs, חָמַד and הִתְאַוָּה, translating both with the same verb, ἐπιθυμέω, “to lust for, to covet.”
See already William L. Moran, “Conclusion of the Decalogue, Ex 20:17–Dt 5:21,” CBL 29 (1967): 548 n. 18.
