Hagith Sivan challenges the traditional reading of the Ten Commandments as a word of God to men. It explores the Commandments in both a legal and narrative contexts, bringing to bear methods of mainstream and feminist biblical scholarship.

1. The Winding Paths of Biblical Wo/Manhood; 1. The Decalogue: scholarly controversies and consensus; 2. Making wo/man; 3. A new reading of the Decalogue and some old problems; II. Monotheism and Monogamy? Text, Image, and Paradigm (Word One; Word Two); 1. Meanings of monotheism; 2. Moses and gendered monotheism; 3. Norms of piety/impiety: on altars and slaves in the 'Covenant Code'; 4. A calf of gold: the allure of the image and the attraction of apostasy; 5. Purity, pollution and piety: Leviticus and Numbers on 'leprosy'; 6. Making monotheists: Deuteronomy's version; 7. Family and female slavery: Deuteronomy 15; 8. From broken to recovered Torah: a calf of gold, a queen and a prophetess; Coda and 'conversion'; III. Oath: Daughter of Discord? (Word Three; Word Nine); 1. Sins of speaking; 2. Harmony and matrimony; 3. Deuteronomy on justice; 4. Vows, virginity and parenthood; 5. Tongues of duplicity? Rahab and Jael; 6. On witches and wives: from Ein Dor to Jezebel; Coda: Ruth and redemption; IV. The Sabbath: Invoking Liberation? Revoking Creation? (Word Four); 1. The Sabbath: biblical and modern Interpretations; 2. Exodus and the Sabbath: labor and leisure on the seventh day; 3. Eve: A gift of the Sabbath? 4. Deuteronomy's Sabbath of liberation; 5. "Is it a Sabbath or new moon Today?" maternity, Sabbath, and 'creation'; 6. From Jericho to Jerusalem: Rahab, Athalya and the meaning of sabbatical 'liberation'; V. The Burden of Birth and the Politics of Motherhood (Word Five); 1. Motherhood and deference; 2. The name of the father: from Leviticus to the daughters of Zelophehad; 3. The meaning(s) of motherhood: Genesis variations; 4. Moses and maternity; 5. Deuteronomy's disobedient sons and unruly daughters; 6. Mothers and super-sons: the story of Samson; VI. The Mapping of Murder (Word Six); 1. 'Law' and ethics; 2. The meaning of murder according to Numbers; 3. Metaphors of murder: The Genesis Version; 4. Is the killing of women justifiable? Murder as rape; 5. A Deuteronomic anatomy of murder; 6. Killing for lust? the female body as motivation; 7. Metaphors of murder: the rape of Tamar; 8. The killing female of the species; Postscript: the female body as a deadly weapon; VII. Conjugality and Covenant (Word Seven); 1. Prelude: whose adultery is it anyway?; 2. Adultery: the view of Leviticus; 3. Adultery according to Genesis; 4. Revealing the concealed: the ordeal of the sotah; 5. Adultery: the view of Deuteronomy; 6. Does sinning pay? The morality of adultery in 2 Sam 11; VIII. Stealing Hearts. Thieving Bodies (Word Eight); 1. What does 'stealing' really mean? 2. Between man and man: Exodus on abduction; 3. Rachel: mediating men by theft; 4. Deuteronomy on stealing humans; 5. When women steal hearts and men steal women; 6. Stealing babies; IX. The Constrains of Desire (Word Ten); 1. Sins of the soul; 2. Coveting foreign women: the seeds of idolatry; 3. Coveting knowledge and sowing the seeds of human morality; 4. Deuteronomy's ideology of coveting: why