a binding charge laid down by someone with the right to require it, above all the covenant charge God gives his people
A commandment in the Hebrew Bible is not a piece of advice or a general principle. It is a concrete charge issued by a person who has the standing to demand it and to hold the hearer answerable. The word grows out of the verb "to charge, to enjoin," and its closest relative in a neighboring language is the word for "a deathbed will," the last binding instructions a father or a king hands on before he dies. That flavor stays with it: a commandment is less a rule on a list than a trust passed from one who has authority to those who are bound to him.
Almost everywhere in the Hebrew Bible the one issuing the charge is God, and the word names what he requires of Israel. It can point to a single directive, but it can also gather up the whole of his revealed will. In the book of Deuteronomy especially, the singular "the commandment" comes to mean the entire covenant being delivered through Moses, not one rule among many. Later, in the prayers and history of the return from exile and in the long meditation of Psalm 119, the plural piles up alongside its companions (statutes, judgments, instruction, decrees) as a way of naming the total demand of the covenant.
The same word covers a charge given by a human in authority, because the one constant idea is a binding order from a rightful superior. A king's order to his officials, a father's or teacher's instruction to a child, a clan ancestor's standing rule his descendants still keep are all named by this word. What does not change is the relationship behind it: the one who commands has the right to command, and the one commanded is bound to keep it. The senses below differ by who is doing the commanding and how wide the charge reaches, not by any change in what the word itself means.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the father's or teacher's commandment in the wisdom books is a household form of the covenant charge or an authority of its own that only borrows covenant language.
- majorityThe sapiential commandment is genuinely its own kind of teaching authority, deliberately echoing covenant language without being identified with the law of Moses.; M. V. Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Bible 18A (2000), 229-30, 240-41, 356-59; W. McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach, OTL (1970)
- minorityProverbs is deliberately covenantal, so the father's commandment is the household instance of the Mosaic instruction.; B. K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 1-15, NICOT (2004), 240-42
- contestedWhatever its origin, the final form of Proverbs has been blended with Mosaic instruction by later editors who layered identifications with the law onto an originally independent wisdom collection.; B. U. Schipper, "When Wisdom Is Not Enough!" in Wisdom and Torah, JSJSup 163 (2013), 55-80