The Christian Essentials series is an exercise in the creative and faithful reception of the Christian tradition. In The Ten Commandments, Leithart argues that the “Ten Words” is the more accurate name for Yahweh’s self-revelation to Israel at Sinai. This naming highlights the various dimensions of these speech acts that include more than straightforward imperatives. Rather than presenting a strict dichotomy between the law (the Ten Words) and the gospel (Christ), Leithart draws out the biblical typology that reveals the Ten Words as a prefiguring of Christ. This consistent Christological focus is a major strength of the book.

Two persistent themes in Leithart’s broader work are the chiastic structure of biblical texts and the perichoretic nature of the world and the Bible. Both emphases are creatively asserted here. The two tables of the law form two halves of a chiasm with the First Word reflecting the Fifth, the Second reflecting the Sixth, and so on. This hermeneutic lens results in insights that are often illuminating, occasionally unconvincing, and always challenging. The perichoretic nature of the Ten Words comes out as Leithart uncovers the ways the commandments “overlap and interpenetrate,” each offering an encapsulation of the whole Decalogue from a different angle (17).

Leithart pushes against the common impulse to view the commandments as a code for personal piety, insisting that they offer a social ethic as well. At points, the social ethic he discerns has a radical tinge. One of the particularly strong sections is his treatment of the command to remember the Sabbath, a practice that “redistributes and equalizes rest” for rich and poor alike (59). Leithart finds an emphasis on social justice in unexpected areas when frames the Fifth Word’s call to honor father and mother as a responsibility of adult children to care for their aging and vulnerable parents. From showing the revolutionary character of the Decalogue for ancient society, he consistently demonstrates how it challenges contemporary assumptions as well. Leithart has given us a guide to the Ten Words which demonstrates their continuing relevance to God’s mission in the world.

Andrew C. Stout, Covenant Theological Seminary (St. Louis, MO)