First Commandment

There are very few first original books about religion. But even with few the Bible by itself is around 1,400 pages. And in a way that means two things. First, that explains why hardly anyone reads it because it looks practically like an encyclopedia, especially to anyone who is not even sure how much they are interested. Then second, it would seem that practically everything should be explained in something that long. But that has not be the case either since a lot of people disagree on many things about it.
So I wondered where should explanations start if any was needed and what would it take to adequately comment on just one. Even before the first commandment there are quite a few ideas that people discuss with some agreement and some disagreement. However, the first commandment, although rather brief, warrants an explanation, but perhaps because it is brief its full implications are practically never mentioned and instead almost always ignored.
The first commandment states, ‘I am the LORD thy God ,You shall have … No other gods before me, Thou shalt not make any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God.’ Regarding making images, that should not be too confusing; there are comments in lots of places, but the commandment wraps up by concluding, ‘the LORD thy God is a jealous God.’ There’s only a few words there to be understood, ‘God’ and ‘jealous’ Well, since God is infinite it some ways you actually can’t completely understand everything about God. But by just keeping that in mind you can still focus on the description that points out that the God is a ‘jealous God.’ Again, God is most often understood as extreme or total in a unique way so the implication might be that its reasonable to believe this jealous attitude could extend in someway everywhere. Since God has no bounders His notion of jealousy would not be fenced in or just restricted by any individual or group of people coming to their own conclusion.
When human beings are considered jealous it might include being resentful, selfish, desirous, covetous along perhaps with some other things. These could seem a little superficial when associated to God so another definition, ‘being protective or vigilant of one’s rights or possessions’ would seem more appropriate relating to God. Since God possesses everything the commandment points out God expects His ownership to be recognized and anything a creature or a human being does is by permission and a limited induration and likely other ways as well. So in the case of human beings any achievements should (likely must) be in some degree acknowledged as a grant or loan by God and credit to whatever extend God decides is due and remains with God.
And here is where the commandment is vastly overlooked. There are so many fields of human endeavor it would be close to pointless to list them all. However all the ‘discoveries’, inventions, developments, creative success depends on the permission and granting of abilities originating from God. Obviously giant libraries exist around the world for the purpose of documenting these activities and praising the achievements of the human beings who are given credit for countless accomplishments. So whether it would be medicine or music, physics or fantasy, architecture or mathematics God is casually overlooked and only on the rarest occasion perhaps mentioned as a second thought. In view of this practice one could conclude, and evidently mankind has concluded, that this is all fine and not that relevant in the scheme of things.
However, quite the opposite must be true since this is the first commandment not a rule buried among a number of others. It is also presented at the start of the nearly 1,400 pages of the Bible which follows. Nonetheless most of the time like the air we breath or the light which makes anything that can be seen visible its taken for granted, dismissed or ignored in the distractions that only seem relevant but mostly lead millions of spectators stumbling around in ultimately mindless circles congratulating themselves in their own exploits. And that can lead to the final empty breath and endless darkness.
When accustomed to the light, it can be a shocking surprise when the switch is thrown and suddenly, practically without warning, nothing is left but darkness. And yet there is the warning , ‘for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God ‘. So there is a reason it is in the beginning without excuse to be overlooked.