Fun With Hieroglyphics

“You shall have no other gods before me.”  Exodus 20:3  ESV

You shall have no – When I visited the British Museum years ago, I bought a game about Egyptian hieroglyphics.  It included many rubber stamps of hieroglyphs and an inkpad and provided instructions about constructing sentences by using these markings.  Many years later when I discovered Frank Seekins’ work on Paleo-Hebrew, I saw the familiarity with Egyptian writing.  But I never tried to investigate whole sentences as pictographic concepts.  Since I will be speaking about this in Phoenix in July, I thought you might be interested in a small slice of what I am finding.  Let’s take a look at just the opening words of the first commandment in the Decalogue.

Now let’s examine the words as ideographs (pictures).  Remember that each symbol (picture) can represent many different things.  For example, the  Aleph (the second letter/pictograph from the right  above) can represent “leader,” “bull,” or “strength.”  Therefore, we will often have several different meanings from the same combination of ideographs.  We have to work with these to see which one fits the phonetic meaning.

The first word is pronounced as lo.  The Hebrew lo means “no” or “not.”  Interesting, if we reverse the letters we get el, the basic word for divinity.  Lamed-Aleph = no.  Aleph-Lamed = God.  God is life.  The opposite of God is death.  We say “Yes” to God, “No” to anything opposed to Him.  Now let’s look at the pictographic meanings.

Control/Authority/Tongue – Strength/Leader  (Lamed attached to a word often means “toward”).  How do we derive “no” from these picture combinations?  “No” controls strength.  To act upon “no” means to assert authority over a leader.  “No” is a verbal assertion of refusing something powerful or something that claims to provide direction.

The next word phonetically is yihiye.  It is usually translated “you shall have.”  The pictograph is the combination of symbols attached to lo.  Its picture sequence is:

Hand/Work/Deed – Behold/Reveal – Hand/Work/Deed – Behold/Reveal (note the double Yod)

Let’s attempt to clarify one of the possible meanings of these pictures.  The gods are revealed in their deeds.  In all ancient near-Eastern cultures, men were created to work for the gods, to serve them.  The doubling of “reveal” and “work” is like putting an exclamation point behind the idea.  The gods demand double the work.  They claim twice the power.  They demand even more work from your hands.

The audience of ex-slaves would certainly know first hand the cruel power of the gods.  They served the Egyptian Pharaoh and his taskmasters for generations.  The gods of the Egyptians became the spiritual oppressors of the Hebrews.  The opening phrase of this commandment is not a universalized prohibition against any generalized pagan god.  It is specifically aimed at those gods who demanded work and service.

It is important to note the translation, “shall have,” actually comes from a verb that means “to occur, to happen, to be, to become, to come to pass.”  The translation reflects Western philosophic ideas of possession.  But Hebrew’s dynamic language uses the verb haya in a different sense.  As TWOT notes, haya is almost never used to denote simple existence or identification.  As a copula (like “is”) it is strikingly absent.  This is why words like “is” are often added to the translated text.  In this case, it seems unlikely that haya has an original sense of possession.  With the pictograph we notice that the connection is to deeds and work, not to ownership.  By extension, we could say that “have” means “to make with your own hands, to reveal something of your own work.”  The symbol of the hand (Yod) employed twice could suggest that this is entirely a human effort.  Perhaps the better translation given the original audience and the prevailing culture would be, “You shall not make any gods.”  Aaron’s action with the golden calf certainly fits this.  But this prohibition is explicit in the following commandment so perhaps there is a distinction here.  Nothing of the work of your hands will become a god to you.

Nahum Sarna comments, “Hebrew does not feature a verb ‘to have’ but expresses possession by h-y-h le-, literally ‘to be to.’  Since the idea of possession necessarily involves relationship, the same term is used for entering into the marriage bod and for establishing the covenant between God and Israel.”[1]

Compare this pictograph with the usual spelling of the name of the God of Israel, Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey.  Work/deed still involved in the name.  But this revelation is followed by a Vav, not another Yod.  The Vav is the picture of a hook or nail.  It secures or attaches one thing to another.  In the name YHVH, this letter attaches one Hey to the other Hey.  The preceding verse contains this spelling of the divine name.  The doubled Yod is absent.  Perhaps we could read this name as “And Deeds!” indicating that the God of the Hebrews is known by His deeds and His deeds alone whereas the false gods are known only through the deeds of men because they have no power of their own.  The “other” gods are the workmanship of human hands.  YHVH is revealed in His own deeds.

This provides another possible interpretation of the pictograph.  While the “gods” are revealed in the work of men twice over, YHVH is revealed in the security of His own deeds.  His work is guaranteed.  The work of the gods depends entirely on the continued efforts of men.  The gods are literally “the work of men revealed in the work of men.”  But YHVH is the God who is revealed in the covenant of His own deeds.

Our next word is leka.  The pictograph is:

Control/Authority/Tongue – Palm/Cover/Open/Allow – (final Kaf)

Here we have the combination of authority and allow.  In context, the verse reads, “No gods allow.”  We translate this two-pictograph expression as, “to you”.  But the pictures amplify the translation.  We are not to allow control, authority or the power of speech to be given to any god whose existence depends solely on human work.  In other words, we are not to give sovereignty to anything we can make with our own hands.  Obviously, this includes the totems and idols common in pagan beliefs, but with this extension we also include anything constructed by human beings, whether material or ideal.  Perhaps this leads us to see the connection to the prohibition concerning images or representations of YHVH.  “Other” gods includes anything our hands might produce; anything that comes solely from human effort.

This makes perfect sense if we consider the first audience.  The children of Jacob have been exposed for several centuries to gods made from human effort, gods who claim power over them.  In fact, Pharaoh himself was declared a god who had the power of life and death in his hand.  When YHVH establishes His new nation, the people are instructed not to cede sovereignty to any god whose origin is human craftsmanship including a god who is human.  “Other” gods is not so much about the multiplicity of divine beings (whether real or not) as much as it is about anything or anyone who rivals the sovereignty of YHVH.  YHVH is now the sole potentate of Israel.  He is their suzerain Lord.  There can be no competitor.

The word highlights the relationship in Hebrew construction.  “Not to be to you” is the Hebraic way of saying “You shall not have.”  In pictographic imagery, leka is the staff of control plus the open palm of allowing.  What a man opens his hand to controls him.  Therefore, God instructs His people to close the hand toward other gods.

Ah, so much to explore.  Perhaps this same exercise whets your appetite and you will come to the Phoenix conference.

Topical Index: Paleo-Hebrew, Exodus 20:3, lo, yihiye, you shall have, no

[1] Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus, p. 109.