Thou Shalt Not

[mirrorshard]

Why did it never occur to me before that this was a promise, not an injunction?

Comments

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Have you been reading Conversations With God by, um, I can't rembmer the name of the author now... ?

But, yeah.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I haven't; I'll keep an eye out for it.

[shuripentu.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting reading of it. I'd never thought of it that way. I suspect many people haven't.

(It makes me wonder what the original Hebrew implies, though.)

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I checked most of the English translations at http://www.biblegateway.org/ (given that I can't read most of the others) and nearly all of them have 'shall' or 'shalt'. A few have 'must'. One of them, calling itself a Literal Translation, interestingly has 'dost' and 'hast'.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Also the Ten Commandments are gendered imperatives, so they're only addressed to men.