A:Strictly speaking, civil law is intended to resolve non-criminal disputes such as disagreements over the meaning of contracts, property ownership, divorce, child custody, and damages for personal and property damage, as opposed to criminal law or religious law. Very little of civil law is actually relevant to the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments do not form a good basis for civil law.
- The first three commandments are essentially different ways of saying to worship no other god, rules which are outside the scope of civil law.
- The next commandment says to do no work on the Sabbath, nor to require or request others to do so or even allow an animal to do so, and is almost never honoured. In any case, there is no good reason for civil law to mandate how we should spend Saturdays or Sundays.
- The fifth commandment is to honour your father and your mother, a useful social rule usually observed out of filial love rather than by bringing to mind a commandment. In any case, whether we honour our parents is not something that can usefully be enforced by civil law.
- The sixth commandment, do not kill, is too general to be the foundation for criminal law, and not relevant to civil law.
- The seventh commandment,do not commit adultery, is too ill-defined to be useful for civil law, and not relevant to criminal law. For example, in Old Testament times it was adultery for a man to have sex with the wife of another Jew, but not with a single woman, widow or prostitute. The commandment was not intended to protect the property rights of non-Jews.
- The eighth commandment, do not steal, is too general to be the foundation for criminal law, and not relevant to civil law.
- The ninth commandment, do not bear false witness against your neighbour, would have originally been intended for some situations now seen as perjury, but has not formed the basis of our criminal law in respect to perjury. It is also commonly seen as a commandment against telling lies, but this has never been incorporated in our civil law.
- The tenth commandment, do not covet that which belongs to your neighbour, including his wife and slaves, would be difficult to enforce in civil law. How do you pass laws against thinking enviously. In any case, wives are no longer thought of as property in Western society, and slaves are no longer permitted.
The modern civil law and criminal law codes are too complex and broad in scope to be compared to a simple list of religious rules.
