Good Teaching (Lekaḥ tov): On the First of the Ten Commandments

Tuviah ben Eliezer

Lekaḥ tov (Good Teaching), Exodus 20:2

Mid-12th Century

I am the Lord your God. (Exodus 20:2)

He opened with the letter alef, the first of the letters: The word which He commanded to a thousand [elef] generations (Psalms 105:8; 1 Chronicles 16:15). Why were the Ten Commandments not placed at the beginning of the Torah? They made a parable. This is like a king who desired to enter a country and rule over it. First, he performed acts of heroism and fought on their behalf, and afterwards he ruled over them. Similarly—His Name should be praised, the king of all kings—the Holy One took Israel out of Egypt, split the sea for them, provided them with manna, raised up the well for them, brought them quail, and battled for them against the Amalekites. Afterwards, He ruled over them, saying to them: I am the Lord your God.

Your God: your is written in the singular. This teaches that all were in full agreement, with a single heart, in accepting the yoke of Heaven with joy. Moreover, they accepted responsibility for one another.

I am the Lord your God: I am the One who was in Egypt, I am the One who performed miracles on your behalf on the sea, I am at Sinai, I am in the past, I am in the future, I am in this world, and I am in the next, as is written: See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with Me (Deuteronomy 32:39), and as is written: I, the Lord, who am the first, and with the last am the same (Isaiah 41:4).

R. Nathan said: From here we have a response to the heretics who claim that there are two powers. For when the Holy One stood up and said, “I am the Lord your God,” who stood up to object?

Translated by Shalom Berger.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

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Tuviah ben Eliezer’s Hebrew Good Teaching (Lekaḥ tov) was written in Byzantium. Some Greek words are found in it, and, it has recently been argued, Tuviah recapitulated ideas of earlier authors from this region. Tuviah may have engaged with some of the Byzantine Karaites of his era, who were in the process of importing Karaite learning from the Jerusalem Karaite center. This work engages midrash extensively but is also attuned to the peshat (plain meaning) sense of scripture. This excerpt comments on the first commandment of the Decalogue, reflecting his rearrangement of earlier rabbinic midrash, such as the Mekhilta de-R. Ishmael. Tuviah’s stray grammatical comment about the singular form of the word your appears to be his own addition, a subtle interpretation of the rabbinic comment.

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Early Medieval Homiletical Works

7th to 12th Century

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