You shall have no other gods before me.
Covered by [A].You shall not make for yourself, or worship, an image.
While this is best covered by [A], it's also a good case for seeing how [A] allows us to identify the key part of this commandment: not the making of an image, but the worshipping, "for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God" (20:4). Hence, under this hermeneutic, we find that this is probably not a commandment against representation of natural or spiritual things, but against idol worship using said images. Other hermeneutic approaches might back this up, e.g. comparing commandments such as God ordaining the addition of statues of cherubim to the Ark and "bowls like almond blossoms" (Exodus 25) for the menorah. Without Jesus' identification of the two core principles of the law, there would seem to be a contradiction, but when we understand these principles, we see that there is no contradiction between "Love the Lord your God" and "Decorate the Ark with cherubimcherubim" (whom you don't worship)."You shall not misuse the name of the Lord.
Covered by [A].Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do no work.
An interesting matter for debate whether this is covered by [A] (respect for God, as explicitly stated in the commandment), by [B] (mercy to the weary labourer, as stated by Jesus in Mark 2:27), or both.Honour your father and mother.
Covered by [B].You shall not murder.
Covered by [B].You shall not commit adultery.
Covered by [B].You shall not steal.
Covered by [B].You shall not give false witness.
Covered by [B].You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour.
Covered by [B] when we remember that the full principle is not just "Love your neighbour," but "Love your neighbour as yourself." The neighbour's happiness must be seen as one with your own; we are not to distinguish between the love we would lavish on them in the form of good things and the love we would lavish on ourselves. Incidentally, this is one of those laws that, in a worldly sense, works best when reciprocated: they ought to be loving you likewise, such that in a God-fearing society, there should not be great differences in belongings that lead to covetousness.
You shall have no other gods before me.
Covered by [A].You shall not make for yourself, or worship, an image.
While this is best covered by [A], it's also a good case for seeing how [A] allows us to identify the key part of this commandment: not the making of an image, but the worshipping, "for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God" (20:4). Hence, under this hermeneutic, we find that this is probably not a commandment against representation of natural or spiritual things, but against idol worship using said images. Other hermeneutic approaches might back this up, e.g. comparing commandments such as God ordaining the addition of statues of cherubim to the Ark and "bowls like almond blossoms" (Exodus 25) for the menorah. Without Jesus' identification of the two core principles of the law, there would seem to be a contradiction, but when we understand these principles, we see that there is no contradiction between "Love the Lord your God" and "Decorate the Ark with cherubim."You shall not misuse the name of the Lord.
Covered by [A].Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do no work.
An interesting matter for debate whether this is covered by [A] (respect for God, as explicitly stated in the commandment), by [B] (mercy to the weary labourer, as stated by Jesus in Mark 2:27), or both.Honour your father and mother.
Covered by [B].You shall not murder.
Covered by [B].You shall not commit adultery.
Covered by [B].You shall not steal.
Covered by [B].You shall not give false witness.
Covered by [B].You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour.
Covered by [B] when we remember that the full principle is not just "Love your neighbour," but "Love your neighbour as yourself." The neighbour's happiness must be seen as one with your own; we are not to distinguish between the love we would lavish on them in the form of good things and the love we would lavish on ourselves. Incidentally, this is one of those laws that, in a worldly sense, works best when reciprocated: they ought to be loving you likewise, such that in a God-fearing society, there should not be great differences in belongings that lead to covetousness.
You shall have no other gods before me.
Covered by [A].You shall not make for yourself, or worship, an image.
While this is best covered by [A], it's also a good case for seeing how [A] allows us to identify the key part of this commandment: not the making of an image, but the worshipping, "for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God" (20:4). Hence, under this hermeneutic, we find that this is probably not a commandment against representation of natural or spiritual things, but against idol worship using said images. Other hermeneutic approaches might back this up, e.g. comparing commandments such as God ordaining the addition of statues of cherubim to the Ark and "bowls like almond blossoms" (Exodus 25) for the menorah. Without Jesus' identification of the two core principles of the law, there would seem to be a contradiction, but when we understand these principles, we see that there is no contradiction between "Love the Lord your God" and "Decorate the Ark with cherubim" (whom you don't worship).You shall not misuse the name of the Lord.
Covered by [A].Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do no work.
An interesting matter for debate whether this is covered by [A] (respect for God, as explicitly stated in the commandment), by [B] (mercy to the weary labourer, as stated by Jesus in Mark 2:27), or both.Honour your father and mother.
Covered by [B].You shall not murder.
Covered by [B].You shall not commit adultery.
Covered by [B].You shall not steal.
Covered by [B].You shall not give false witness.
Covered by [B].You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour.
Covered by [B] when we remember that the full principle is not just "Love your neighbour," but "Love your neighbour as yourself." The neighbour's happiness must be seen as one with your own; we are not to distinguish between the love we would lavish on them in the form of good things and the love we would lavish on ourselves. Incidentally, this is one of those laws that, in a worldly sense, works best when reciprocated: they ought to be loving you likewise, such that in a God-fearing society, there should not be great differences in belongings that lead to covetousness.
My preferred hermeneutic for all specific commandments is that offered by Jesus in Matt. 22:40, where he says that all the law and prophets are summarized in [A] "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength, mind, and soul" and [B] "Love your neighbour as yourself." I reason that we should be able to extrapolate and/or sift all remaining commandments based on these two.
The 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17):
You shall have no other gods before me.
Covered by [A].You shall not make for yourself, or worship, an image.
While this is best covered by [A], it's also a good case for seeing how [A] allows us to identify the key part of this commandment: not the making of an image, but the worshipping, "for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God" (20:4). Hence, under this hermeneutic, we find that this is probably not a commandment against representation of natural or spiritual things, but against idol worship using said images. Other hermeneutic approaches might back this up, e.g. comparing commandments such as God ordaining the addition of statues of cherubim to the Ark and "bowls like almond blossoms" (Exodus 25) for the menorah. Without Jesus' identification of the two core principles of the law, there would seem to be a contradiction, but when we understand these principles, we see that there is no contradiction between "Love the Lord your God" and "Decorate the Ark with cherubim."You shall not misuse the name of the Lord.
Covered by [A].Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do no work.
An interesting matter for debate whether this is covered by [A] (respect for God, as explicitly stated in the commandment), by [B] (mercy to the weary labourer, as stated by Jesus in Mark 2:27), or both.Honour your father and mother.
Covered by [B].You shall not murder.
Covered by [B].You shall not commit adultery.
Covered by [B].You shall not steal.
Covered by [B].You shall not give false witness.
Covered by [B].You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour.
Covered by [B] when we remember that the full principle is not just "Love your neighbour," but "Love your neighbour as yourself." The neighbour's happiness must be seen as one with your own; we are not to distinguish between the love we would lavish on them in the form of good things and the love we would lavish on ourselves. Incidentally, this is one of those laws that, in a worldly sense, works best when reciprocated: they ought to be loving you likewise, such that in a God-fearing society, there should not be great differences in belongings that lead to covetousness.
As we can see when we use this hermeneutic, it doesn't matter so much whether we say that the old laws "still apply" or not, but rather whether they are reflections of the greatest commandments, which are presumably timeless. We could easily apply this (and I do) to every law in the OT.
(A few do give us pause in terms of trying to understand the nature of the love involved, and that's a rich field of study and application, of course. One example might be "Do not cook a goat in its mother's milk": Is this love of a kind of neighbour [B]? Is it a respect for natural sympathies that ultimately shows a love for nature's creator [A]? Or is it a cultural artifact that we can no longer understand in terms of the love it shows?)