Human beings seem to love lists. I would guess that 30-35% of sports talk radio is some form of “list talk”. Questions like “top 5 soccer players” or “who would you have in your starting line up” or “worst quarterback of all time” all are versions of “list talk”.
Like most lists, there is a bias toward #1. It is usually at the top of the list as you work your way up from #10. The “top spot” is reserved for the penultimate of the list talk conversation and the top of the list is also a short hand embodiment of the whole list. It is as though lists “build up” to who is #1 like a triangle with #1 being the peak.
This is bias is important in that it impacts how we read and understand the 10 commandments of Exodus 20.
The bias toward #1 might give the impression that the first commandment (You shall not have any other gods before me), is the most important. And there is nothing wrong with that assumption, frankly that is a really good commandment. However, the power of that commandment is lost when we read it as #1 and the others are slightly “less important” - especially the farther down the list you get.
However, if we read the 10 commandments not as a list of descending commandments, but as a list that builds up to something then we come to a keen insight.
If you read the 10 commandments as building up to the last commandment (you shall not covet) then you may come to see that it is #10 that is the most important commandment - not the least.
If we were a people who did not covet , if we did not desire the desires of others, if we were only desiring the desires of God, then all the other commandments would not be necessary. We have false gods because we covet the power of that god. We do not honor the sabbath because we covet the approval of the market to make money. We would not kill or participate in adulatory if we did not covet our neighbors things or loved ones.
The next time you read the 10 Commandments, consider reading them from ten to one and see how that impacts how you understand them. And then, let us not violate the commandment to covet.