Exodus 20:17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant… I. The sin here prohibited is CONCUPISCENCE, or an unlawful lusting after what is another man's. For since God had, in the other Commandments, forbidden the acts of sin against our neighbour, He well knew that the best means to keep men from committing sin in act would be to keep them from desiring it in heart; and therefore lie, who is a Spirit, imposeth a law upon our spirits, and forbids us to covet what before He had forbidden us to perpetrate. There are four degrees of this sinful concupiscence. 1. There is the first film and shadow of an evil thought, the imperfect embryo of a sin before it is well shaped in us, or hath received any lineaments and features. And these the Scripture calls the imaginations of the thoughts of men's hearts (Genesis 6:5). 2. A farther degree of this concupiscence is when these evil motions are entertained in the sensual mind with some measure of complacency and delight. 3. Hereupon follows assent and approbation of the sin in the practical judgment. 4. When any sinful motion hath thus gotten an allowance and pass from the judgment, then it betakes itself to the will for a decree. II. I shall close up all with some PRACTICAL USE AND IMPROVEMENT. 1. Learn here to adore the unlimited and boundless sovereignty of the great God. 2. Content not thyself with an outward conformity to the law, but labour to approve thy heart in sincerity and purity unto God; otherwise thou art but a pharisaical hypocrite, and washest only the outside of the cup, when within thou art still full of unclean lusts. 3. See here the best and the surest methods, to keep us from the outward violation of God's laws; which is to mortify our corrupt concupiscence and desires. And therefore the wisdom of God hath set this Commandment in the last place, as a fence and guard to all the rest. (Bp. E. Hopkins.) Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. |
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