By Roy B. Blizzard
[17] Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
Translation:
You shall not inordinately desire with idolatrous tendencies your neighbor’s house, you shall not inordinately desire with idolatrous tendencies your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant nor his female servant nor his ox nor his donkey nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Comments:
This is an interesting passage that is of much greater importance than it might appear on the surface. This is due to the meaning of the word "chamad," which is translated "covet." As we use the term in English, covet could just mean "to want, desire or would like to have." But, that is not the meaning of the word "chamad."
An indication of the seriousness of the violation of this commandment is found in Matthew 5: 28 that reads:
[28] But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
This does not mean what it appears to mean on the surface.
I have known many people who were burdened with guilt because they felt they had a spirit of lust. They had prayed and/or gone through deliverance a dozen times trying to get rid of a spirit of lust and yet every time they saw a beautiful woman, it jumped right back on them again.
We are all sexual beings. That is the way God created us and we have sexual thoughts and we have sexual fantasies, and that is okay. It is a natural sexual response. But that is not what we are talking about in the 10th commandment nor in Matthew 8-24.
The word "chamad" can be found in Brown Driver-Briggs #2530. It means "in a bad sense, inordinate, ungoverned, selfish desire of idolatrous tendencies." There is nothing wrong with window-shopping. You can walk down the street, look in the window, see a beautiful new plasma TV and you could desire to have one. You could visualize it sitting in your house in your living room or den. That is a normal human response. There is nothing wrong with that: no reason to feel guilty or ashamed. But, when you pick up a brick, throw it through the window and run off with the TV, then you have moved from a normal human response into sin.
This is the point that is being made in the 10th commandment. You shall not desire anything that belongs to your neighbor with an ungoverned, inordinate desire of idolatrous tendencies that would so consume you that you would move from the normal human response into sin – sin against both your neighbor and against God.
