Adultery and Theft: Seizing God’s Gifts

Commandments Seven and Eight

In my reflection on the sixth commandment, I noted that the two tables of the Decalogue follow the logic of a descending order of severity: having a false god and murder are the “capital vices” of man’s duty to his Maker and his neighbor, respectively. Of course, the commandments that follow each capital commandment descend in size, if you will, but, like layers of an onion, they get closer to the heart of the matter.

For example, one of the principle causes of abandoning worship of the one God may well be dishonoring one’s father and mother. As for the second table, St. James has given us the word already: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder” (Jas 4:1-2a).^[1] Illicit or untamed desire is the cause of murder. Thus, the commandments are interwoven. Indeed, as noted in the previous post, fidelity to the whole first table requires fidelity to the second. For, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 Jn 4:20). Furthermore, fidelity to the capital commandment of each table requires obedience to the commandments which follow from it, and disobedience to the latter commandments leads to breaking the capital commandments.

The Drama of Second-Table Sins: Adultery and Theft in OT Narrative

Nowhere is this insight more clearly reflected than in the Old Testament narratives themselves. Indeed, it is easy to forget that Biblical narratives are part of the unfolding of the Torah, they are part of the divine pedagogy and are of instrumental importance in rightly understanding the Law. Consider, for the purposes of this present post, the way that the will to theft and adultery led, in two different biblical narratives, to the murder of the innocent. These narratives are meant to teach us the logic of the Decalogue, the connection between the sixth commandment and those that follow from it.

David and Bathsheba: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

The familiar story of David’s adultery with Bathsheba begins with David’s leisurely stroll on the roof in the evening. Upon seeing a beautiful woman bathing, he inquired of her and “took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her” (2 Sam 11:4). Note the resonance with Genesis Three: see, take, fall. The spiraling fallout of this sin is hard to overstate – the entire remainder of David’s reign is tainted by this sin, even as he receives God’s pardon following his repentance.

To cover for his sin, David summons Uriah, the faithful Israelite soldier, and tries to encourage him to lay with his wife. Uriah initially refuses to take his leisure while his comrades are in battle and thus David’s plan A is foiled. He moves next to greater measures and the following evening, David “made him drunk” (2 Sam 11:13). Still, Uriah refuses to go down to his house, so David moves on to plan C: “In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, ‘Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die” (2 Sam 11:14-15). After Uriah’s tragic fall in battle, David took Bathsheba to be his wife and she bore him a son. “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Sam 11:27).

The following chapter includes the message of Nathan the prophet to David concerning the exploitation of a poor man by a rich man who stole his single ewe lamb. In David’s outrage at Nathan’s message he utters his own condemnation: “As the Lord lives,” David said, “the man who has done this deserves to die” (2 Sam 12:5). “You are the man!” Nathan continued, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel . . . Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife” (2 Sam 12:7a, 10). Note that David’s breach of the sixth and seventh commandments is an explicit rejection of the first table as well: “You have despised me,” the Lord said through the prophet.

David’s adultery, rooted as it is in his illicit desire for another man’s wife, led to a breach of nearly the entire second table, and by implication, the first table as well. Like the Israelites’ idolatry at Sinai, both tablets were shattered in the king’s infidelity.

Ahab and Naboth: Thou Shalt Not Steal

Another dramatic story of infidelity in Israel’s history comes at the end of the First Book of Kings. There, the wicked king Ahab requests the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. Naboth, in fidelity to his family estate, refuses to give away his vineyard. The familiar story, just like David’s adultery, nearly runs the gamut of second table breaches: Ahab’s wife organizes false witnesses against Naboth, who is subsequently stoned to death (1 Kgs 21:13). “And as soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it” (1 Kgs 21:16). Once again, the Lord sends a prophet to condemn the wicked actions of the king: Elijah reports “thus says the Lord, ‘Have you killed and also taken possession? . . . In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick up your own blood” (1 Kgs 21:19). Notice the familiar pattern: see, take, fall.

Both stories from the Old Testament’s narrative dramatize the effects of breaches of the second table. They both bespeak the connection between murder, another second-table breach (be that adultery or theft), and illicit desire.

The Heart of the Matter: Seizing Created Goods

These stories from the Old Testament reveal something of the interconnectivity of the commandments and also place the heart of breaches against the second table in the heart, in illicit desire. Thus, it is not a stretch to take the seventh and eighth commandments together, for they appear to be rooted in vices of a similar character and their antidotes are virtually identical. The seventh commandment forbids sexual relations with another man’s spouse. The eighth commandment forbids unjust usurping of another man’s goods. Both adultery and theft stem from disordered desire. The disorder resides both in the mode of the desire (that is, its particular form, intensity, and priority are all out of order) and in the object of desire.

To do justice to both commandments, one would need to consider a number of different applications that fall under the commandment in the form of proscriptions and prescriptions (as with all the other commandments). These diverse applications can be found across the spectrum of historic and contemporary Christian catechisms on the Decalogue.

Under the seventh commandment, one is encouraged to explore questions of divorce and remarriage, the pervasive problem of illicit sexual content on the various forms of internet media, and a host of bioethical matters like artificial contraception and reproductive technologies, among many other topics. Under the eighth commandment, one will historically find topics as diverse as private property and the universal destination of goods, usury, care for the nonhuman creation, unjust market practices, and even diligence in a lawful vocation and the refusal of an unlawful one.

What underlies both commandments, however, is the rich tradition of Christian reflection on the vices (or disordered moral habits). Lurking behind breaches of these two commandments are the vices of lust and avarice, respectively. Lust may be defined as a disordered desire for sense pleasure (especially of a sexual nature). Avarice, on the other hand, is a disordered desire for things or goods (maybe for the sake of pleasure, status, stability, etc.). Borrowing from one philosopher whose words refer to a different vice, “The [lustful or avaricious] inhabit a world of objects, which can be sequestered and possessed; the [virtuous lovers] inhabit a world of gifts, given things, which can be [enjoyed] by participation, but which, because of their very natures can never be possessed.”^[2] The issue is a matter of vision. The similarity between these two vices is the way they imagine the whole world of creatures as objects to be seized rather than as divine gifts.

Both adultery and theft have as their objects some genuine good. The problem with both is the particular object of desire and the method of attaining this object. In adultery, the good pursued is sex, but not with one’s spouse. In theft, the good is some created good, but the possession of one’s neighbor. In both adultery and theft, a person seeks possession of some good that is not properly his to possess. Illicit desire prompts the adulterer and thief to seize created goods that are not theirs to possess, and the fallout from this seizure often blows these sins out of their initial proportions, as was the case for both David and Ahab.

It is incomplete to say that adultery or theft seek something illicit, for this may leave one open to the thought that possessions or sex are bad per se, though they are, of course, the good creation of God. Thus, our critique of adultery and theft must consider not simply the objects of desire themselves, though it is true to say that, by circumstance, the particular goods sought by adultery or theft are illicit for us to enjoy. Our critique must go further and address not only the good sought, but the mode of seeking itself. For adultery, the good of sex is sought outside the bond of marriage. In theft, the good of possessions is sought outside of the context of lawful ownership. In both cases, the mode of seeking is changed by these circumstantial facts. For the meaning of sex, just as the meaning of possessing some created good, is changed when it is enjoyed out of its proper place.

In both instances, some created good is no longer imagined as given – a creaturely participation in the always prior goodness of God. Rather, for the thief or adulterer, created goods are construed as mere objects of use – instruments of personal gratification and pleasure. Instead of a created reflection of the divine goodness, the lustful and avaricious person sees only the created good. He would enjoy it with his back turned to God, as it were. In so doing, he falsifies the created good and drags himself into the dirt. If we will not return thanks to God for the creaturely gifts he has given to us, we will be dragged down by our attempts to sequester and use the gifts. We will be turned in on ourselves and the gifts will sour on us.

Giving and Receiving: The Antidote to Adultery and Theft

The antidote to the illicit seizing of created goods is, in the first place, gratefully receiving the world as a gift. Created goods are best understood as gifts of God and sex is best understood as the spousal union. Thus, to seek spousal union with someone who is not your spouse (by adultery) is to seek something other than “spousal union” at least in its truest sense. To seek to enjoy a gift that has not been given to you (by theft) is to seek, therefore, something other than a gift in its truest sense.

Here it is not hard to see the connection between the first and second tables of the law. For, in both adultery and theft, we attempt to enjoy some created good that was not given to us to enjoy. That is to say, we try to play God with created goods, seizing them for ourselves rather than receiving what has been given with gratitude. Is this not the primordial sin of our first parents? The attempt to enjoy an apparent good apart from its divine source. Doing so falsifies the created good and locks us up in the prison of our own desire.

How can we escape such a snare? Remember that the devil’s primordial temptation was an implied theological slight: “Did God really say?” Read: God is being rather stingy with you, isn’t he, saying you can’t eat this fruit?

The solution to such diabolical ways of thinking? Consider 1 Timothy 4:1-5:

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

The devil wished to draw our first parents’ attention to the boundaries of desire and prod their gaze away from all the good things God had given. Gratitude may well be the first antidote to adultery and theft, as well as all of their subtle manifestations in the hearts of men. One cannot be full of gratitude and at the same time hanker after things not possessed. An economy of gifts is altogether different from an economy of objects. Gratitude transforms our vision not just of the world, but of its Maker.

The Primacy of Love

Both adultery and theft fail to see the human vocation as, most fundamentally, not self-gratification but rather self-gift. Indeed, as the great Pope John Paul II taught so clearly, the marital act itself is an icon of the human vocation as a whole.^[3] The language of the human body, communicated iconically in the spousal union, has an essentially spousal character to it. That is to say, humans fulfill their divine vocation by giving themselves to God and others in love. Of course, this self-giving has a particular, holy, and exclusive character in the bond of marriage, but if St. Paul’s reflection on marriage has anything to tell us it is that the marriage bond is a sign of something else, something greater: the spousal love of Christ for his bride, the Church. Thus, every single human person is implicated in the spousal significance of the human drama.

We are made to love and be loved, to give ourselves wholly to God and those God has given us to serve. In the words of Gaudium et Spes, “man . . . cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (§24).^[4] There is another respect, however, in which man cannot give himself without first possessing himself. We are not capable of becoming a self-gift if we are unable to gather into one our attention, desire, and strength for the sake of another.

Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) once wrote, “only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love.”^[5] Chastity, in the words of a contemporary, “is a marker of integrity, of a personality whose parts are assembled in harmonious completeness.”^[6] To be chaste is to be whole. We may well find ourselves, in the words of Gaudium et Spes, by giving ourselves away, but we cannot do so without at least the first seeds of chastity. Thus, if we are going to fulfill the seventh and eighth commandments today, an emphasis on the virtue of chastity and its relationship to charity is in order.

Chastity is the moderation of desire for the pleasures of sense, especially the pleasures of sex.^[7] Chastity is the famous virtue that St. Augustine prayed for in his hour of conflict in the following words, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”^[8] A part of the cardinal virtue of temperance, chastity is discussed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the following words: “Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy” (¶2339).^[9] Thus, chastity is an integral part of the life of charity, because chastity frees us from the bonds of greedy lust and enables us to give ourselves to others in love.

It is important to note, however, whenever discussing a virtue like chastity, to bear in mind that moderation of the desire for sense pleasure is not the same thing as erasure of the desire. The Christian ethical ideal is not one of stoic detachment. Temperance (under whose umbrella falls the virtue of chastity) is opposed to insensibility toward sense pleasures in the same way that it is opposed to excesses of desire for the same. The virtue of temperance has to do with the proper ordering of desire, the harmony that exists in a soul in tune with the reality of God, the world, and oneself.

Chastity, the virtue opposed to lust, works in tandem with contentment and gratitude, those virtues opposed to avarice. They both transform our perception of the world. To be chaste and grateful is to see the world as inhabited by divine gifts, each of which to be enjoyed – or forgone – as the things they really are and not instrumentalized into the things we wish them to be. Furthermore, these virtues create enough space to liberate us to give ourselves away, no longer bogged down by self-seeking lust.

Fidelity to the seventh and eighth commandments today, then, requires an explicit reframing of the significance of ordinary life together in community. Helping an elderly neighbor move some furniture, assisting on church cleanup days, donating money or time to the ministries or charities – each of these activities should be consciously understood as ways of fulfilling the seventh and eighth commandments. Our bodies, our goods, are not means for personal gratification but for self-gift. We would do well to creatively consider more positive fulfillments of these proscriptive commandments. For it is not abstinence but love that is the fulling of the law (Rom 13:10).

Conclusion

“To the degree that a man loves he cannot steal,” one contemporary wrote.^[10] Neither can the man who loves see the world of goods as a collection of objects for his exploitation and use. Ahab and his wife did not see Naboth as a neighbor to love and his family estate as something to respect. Instead, they saw his vineyard as an object to be seized for their own gain. Ahab’s failure of gratitude and contentment led to the essence of second-table violations: murder. As with all second-table violations, in these acts, God was defied. Untrained desire distorts our vision. When our vision is thus distorted, we act in ways that frustrate the wellbeing of ourselves and our communities.

I would add further, and contrary to the opinions of many a pop song, that inasmuch as a man truly loves he cannot commit adultery (or any of its attendant vices of the heart). In the drama of David and Bathsheba, the inner meaning of adultery was uncovered in the gravest of second-table violations – murder – once again. In both David’s and Ahab’s failures a person was instrumentalized as useful for the king. In David’s case, Bathsheba became an instrument for sexual pleasure; in Ahab’s case, Naboth and his vineyard for personal gain. Christ calls us to a different way. For the loving eye does not see a world of objects to be sequestered for self-gratification but rather a world full of divine gifts to be received with thanksgiving. Furthermore, it does not see the community of persons as potential objects of personal (or even mutual) pleasure, but rather as icons of God and the worthy recipients of self-giving charity.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, biblical references in this post will be taken from the The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Crossway, 2001. ↑
2. Paul Griffiths, Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar, (Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2009), 22. Griffiths’ book is principally concerned with the vice of curiositas (curiosity), but his comments apply, to my mind, to any disordered desire for created things. ↑
3. See especially, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Love and Responsibility trans. H.T. Willetts, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein, (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006). ↑
4. Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, promulgated by Pope Paul VI, December 7, 1965. Accessed July 5, 2025: https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html. ↑
5. Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willetts, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 171. ↑
6. Erik Varden, Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses, (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), 15. I cannot commend this book highly enough, ↑
7. See Matthew Levering, Aquinas’ Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 90-106. ↑
8. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 145, VIII.vii[17]. ↑
9. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2^nd ed. Accessed July 15, 2025. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P85.HTM. ↑
10. https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=13-03-012-v&readcode=&readtherest=true#therest/. ↑