Thy Neighbor's Wife

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Do not covet your neighbor's house. Do not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's." Maimonides (the Rambam) viewed the prohibition of coveting as a fence or boundary intended to keep adherents a safe distance away from the very serious sins of theft, adultery, and murder:

The family in 1980, the year Thy Neighbor's Wife was published. Photo: Thomas Victor/Courtesy of Gay Talese Do not desire to possess anything that belongs to another person--not a house, a wife, a husband, a slave, an ox, a donkey, or anything else. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, or his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Rather than taking the pleasure out of life, Temperance confers a calm control over the things that delight us most, enabling us to enjoy them fully because we enjoy them in their proper measure. The Catechism quotes an early Christian writer, who urged his listeners to “Remain simple and innocent, and you will be like little children who do not know the evil that destroys man’s life.” (CCC, No. 2517) Temperance calls us to the purity of heart Jesus commends in his Sermon on the Mount. H eeeelleew. Nan breezes into the townhouse just after 7 p.m. Still holding her bags, still wearing her trench coat, she and Gay engage in a hilarious mix of high-end literary talk, couple shorthand, and gentle argument. She mentions that Terrence Rafferty raved about one of her books, The Glister, by John Burnside, in The New York Times Book Review that comes out on Sunday.You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” Thou dost not desire the house of thy neighbour, thou dost not desire the wife of thy neighbour, or his man-servant, or his handmaid, or his ox, or his ass, or anything which is thy neighbour's.'

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; nor his field, nor his servant, nor his maid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any of his cattle, nor whatever belongs to thy neighbour. You shall not covet [that is, selfishly desire and attempt to acquire] your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” The sixth beatitude proclaims, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." "Pure in heart" refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God's holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity; chastity or sexual rectitude; love of truth and orthodoxy of faith. …The "pure in heart" are promised that they will see God face to face and be like him.( 1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2) Purity of heart is the precondition of the vision of God. Even now it enables us to see according to God, to accept others as "neighbors"; it lets us perceive the human body - ours and our neighbor's - as a temple of the Holy Spirit, a manifestation of divine beauty. [34]You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. For what it’s worth, Nan has no intention of meddling. “You know, I just trust Gay,” she says. “When we married I made a little vow to myself that I would never interfere with his writing—whatever he wanted to write—and so far, I’ve been okay with that.” Concupiscence is one of the results of Original Sin. It is not sinful in itself, but its presence within us can incline us to make poor moral choices when faced with certain attractive options. Concupiscence is what St. Paul has in mind when he employs the very apt image of the flesh rebelling against the spirit.

The Jewish Study Bible, Tanakh Translation. 2004. Berlin, Adele; Brettler, Marc Zvi; Fishbane, Michael, eds. Jewish Publication Society, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-529751-2 Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Chastity is the virtue and gift that enables and strengthens us to love with hearts undistracted by sensual desire. But among you, as is proper among the saints, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed.Is the love of money, or of women, or of glory, or of any one of the other efficient causes of pleasure, the origin of slight and ordinary evils? Isn't it owing to this passion that relationships are broken asunder, and change the good will which originates in nature into an irreconcilable enmity? And aren't great countries and populous kingdoms made desolate by domestic seditions, through such causes? And aren't earth and sea continually filled with novel and terrible calamities by naval battles and military expeditions for the same reason?" [18] The Book Exodus with the commentary of Abraham ibn Ezra, Naples 1488 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

The faithful must believe the articles of the Creed “so that by believing they may obey God, by obeying they may live well, by living well may purify their hearts, and with pure hearts may understand what they believe.”For the Apostle (St. Paul) it is not a matter of despising and condemning the body which with the spiritual soul constitutes man’s nature and personal subjectivity. Rather, he is concerned with the morally good or bad works, or better, the permanent dispositions – virtues and vices – which are the fruit of submission (in the first case) or the resistance (in the second case) to the saving action of the Holy Spirit. For this reason the Apostle writes, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”