7th Commandment: Do Not Commit Adultery

Reflection Questions

• What is the 7th Commandment seeking to protect?

• Why does the Bible view a marriage covenant as important? Consider Genesis 1-2.

• Why do both Joseph and David view adultery as first of all a sin against God?

• What does the Apostle Paul see marriage pointing to, and how does this connect back to Yahweh’s relationship with Israel in the Hebrew Bible?

• How is the 7th Commandment relevant both to married and unmarried people?

Chapter 1: Defining Adultery and Reflecting on its Penalty

In commands six, seven, and eight, we find a descending scale of stuff that belongs to your neighbor: their life (killing), their spouse (adultery), and their possessions (stealing). The seventh commandment in Hebrew is two words, lo tin’aph, or “Do not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14). The root word na’aph means to have sex with someone who is married, and thereby to violate that person’s marriage covenant.

Though Leviticus 20:10 states capital punishment as a penalty for adultery, there is little evidence for whether or not this sentence was ever carried out in Israel. Even when the Pharisees invoke it against a woman in John 8:2-11, Jesus lets her go. But we should pay attention to this law’s significance as meditation literature. The penalty’s severity tells us something about the value underneath the command. In this case, the covenant partnership between a married couple is made as valuable as a life.

So to flip the seventh command over might be something like, “Protect the covenant marriage partnership of your neighbor as if you were protecting their life.”

Chapter 2: Israel’s Unique Prohibitions Against Adultery

The Bible also views adultery as a kind of cosmic rupture and violation against God. In Genesis 39:1-10, the wife of Potiphar, Joseph’s master, tries to convince Joseph to sleep with her. Joseph refuses, saying this would not only dishonor his master, but also be sin against God. In 2 Samuel 11, when King David sleeps with Bathsheba and kills her husband, he later says he has sinned specifically against Yahweh (2 Sam. 12:13).

Valuing monogamous sexual faithfulness within marriage and prohibiting adultery and prostitution were unique features of ancient Israelite society. Adultery by men with any number of women (such as prostitutes) was normal and acceptable in most surrounding ancient and 1st-century cultures (see Judah’s folly in Genesis 38). But simultaneously, the Bible uniquely honors women who are stuck in the profession of prostitution, such as Rahab in Joshua 2.

Chapter 3: Genesis 1-2’s Meditations on Man and Woman as One

Genesis 1 is a meditation on humanity as both one and many. Male and female together as humanity are called the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). But they are also different from each other and can reflect God’s own generative life through reproduction. From a Christian perspective, this is one of the ways humans image the triune God. Men and women are different from one another, but they are also one.

After God breathes life into the man, he becomes a living being, or nephesh khayyah in Hebrew (Gen. 2:7). But then in verse 8, God says that it’s not good for the man to be alone. For humanity to fulfill their vocation, there needs to be two who are distinct. So God creates the woman to be the man’s essential, matching, delivering ally (or ‘ezer kenegdo in Hebrew). An ‘ezer is not just a helper, as many translations say, but truly a rescuer (as evidenced by the name Moses gives his son in Exodus 18:2-4, and also its use in Psalm 20:1-2).

God creates the woman (’ishah in Hebrew) out of the man (’ish in Hebrew), making the one, two distinct beings. In addition to their reproducing function, this passage focuses on the mystery of a man and woman leaving their natural flesh and bone and being united together as a new familial bond, or one flesh (Gen. 2:24). While animals reproduce randomly, God institutes this special monogamous covenant bond for human reproduction.

Chapter 4: Marriage as a Reflection of God’s Covenant with His People

During humanity’s spiral into rebellion and destruction after Eden, the first polygamist we’re introduced to is a man named Lamech, who also celebrates murdering a man (Gen. 4:18-24). This negative character casts a shadow over all future polygamous marriages in the Bible, which are often portrayed as broken, full of heartache, and painful, especially for women (see Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in Gen. 16; 21:8-21, and Jacob and his four wives in Gen. 29-30).

But the main reason for monogamous marriage in the Bible is that this is the way God relates to his covenant people. He chooses ancient Israel in love and expects absolute loyalty to him alone (Deut. 7:6-8). It’s a marriage! This reality is confirmed when Israel’s prophets portray the nation’s worship of other gods as prostitution and adultery (Exod. 34:15-16; Hos. 3).

So marriage reflects God’s covenant with his people. It creates the conditions where a human sacrificially and faithfully loves just one covenant partner over the course of a lifetime. And in doing so, what a human finds is of such cosmic value that it’s compared to the value of a human life. Paul speaks directly to the Hebrew Bible’s profound connection between marriage and God’s covenant with his people in Ephesians 5:21-32 when he says that marriage is a picture of Jesus and his Church. So whether followers of Jesus are married or not, they are communally together as the Church married to Jesus.

Chapter 5: Recap and Sacrificial Love as the Highest Value

Jon and Tim recap all they’ve discussed so far. Marriage is a symbol of the creator's relentless, focused love and loyalty towards creation, specifically his human image-bearing partners. And marriage is also a sacred covenant where two humans are training to sacrificially love and be devoted to another, just like how God is devoted to his people.

The higher value of marriage is to learn to love, not simply to procreate. This is why celibacy, or loving others without procreation, became not just a viable but an honorable option for Christians in the early Jesus movement. Because sacrificially loving other humans, and forming the kind of character that lives in that way, is more important than satisfying sexual desires.

If we were to flip over the meaning of the 7th Commandment, we might say: if we see a married couple in our community, their marriage is the most important context where they're learning to become fully loving human beings. So help protect that bond, honor it, and certainly don’t shatter it in order to satisfy our own sexual desires.