The Mother of all Sin is Theft. That assertion certainly isn’t original with you but you question why theft occupies such a lowly rung on the Sacred Tablets. “Thou shalt not steal” is in fact the 8th Commandment. You must concede, as Author, God had every right to give Moses a set of rules and that He could prioritize them in any way that suited Him. They were His rules, after all. Predictably, therefore, He placed Himself front and center, even admitting to jealousy, a rather human affliction. Commandments 1-4 duly mandate that you render Him the love, respect and fidelity He deserves — exclusively — or else. No problem. He’s the Boss. Commandments 1-4 concern, therefore, your spiritual relationship to Him in the heavenly realm. Suddenly, then, The Commandments do a 180 and dictate your mortal relationship in the physical world. That abrupt change in direction doesn’t add up. In hindsight, He could have instructed Moses to publish two documents: One, “The Four Commandments,” subtitled “Man’s Relationship to God;” the second, “The Six Commandments,” subtitled “Man’s Relationship to Man.” For that matter, the original document could have been happenstance. For the sake of argument, you could allege that Jehovah threw down a couple of dozen or more laws in no particular order and it was Moses who prioritized, tabulated and edited them, guessing that Ten would be far easier to brand than, say, Nine, Fifteen or Twenty Six. Not particularly skilled in this sort of stenographic endeavor, he simply winged it. He’s on this cold, barren mountain for 80 days (and nights) in two separate sessions, for pete’s sake; he doesn’t have a Bic and posted notes handy. No pocket recorder. No IPad. You can only imagine how he managed to juggle this information until he had time to transcribe it. You have to give him credit for capturing what he did. He had his hands full. He had to take time out from this historic interview with God to massacre approximately 3000 of his own people for daring to worship a Golden Calf. Given the same assignment today, with the help of Power Point methodology, and assuming Ten was the magic number, the Commandments might have looked like this:

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
I. Man’s Union With God
A. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
a. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing.
b. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.
B. Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.
II. Man’s Union With Man
A. Thou shalt not steal.
a.Thou shalt not kill.
b.Thou shalt not commit adultery.
c.Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
d.Thou shalt not covet
B. Honour thy father and thy mother

Essentially, Two Commandments run the show. There’s only one God and you better worship Him. And you can’t steal, period. Everything else is a subset. In the clear light of day, almost every sin of man’s inhumanity to man is rooted in Theft. Every second of every day, men steal lives and property. On a grand scale, nations invade nations for one purpose — to steal. Tribes massacre tribes for one purpose — to loot and pillage. Joshua led the Jews to commit genocide at Jericho for only one purpose — to annihilate the people and steal their wealth (all of course with God’s blessing). Serial killers get off on stealing life itself. Crime syndicates kill to steal and steal to kill.  Government is a world-class thief and ultimate taker of life. Elected officials steal from people living today and people not yet born. They live in the lap of luxury, squander the public treasury and feather their nests. You will be hard pressed to think of a single iniquity not related to Theft — whether you lie, cheat, covet or kill. Evidently, God planted a Theft Gene deeply into the human DNA and then commanded humans to reject it on pain of Hell itself. If you weren’t so fearful of retaliation, you might suggest He pulled a dark joke of cosmic proportion. Because, genetically, humans are driven to steal. No walk of life, however lofty, or lowly, is immune. This must be true. The evidence was and is explicit — in war-torn lands, in prisons, in boardrooms, in courts of law, in bungalows and mansions, on farms, in factories, in public buildings and private places. If this were not true, human history simply would not repeat itself. Human history does in fact repeat itself precisely because humans precisely repeat their behavior — slaves to the Theft Gene. At the end of the day, you have to look in the mirror and ask: “Are you guilty of Theft? Of course not. Of course not. Well, maybe a slip here — or there — nothing that amounts to anything . . . . . . . . .