“The second of the Ten Commandments is oddly worded: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other gods before Me.” The statement seems almost self-contradictory. Here the Torah insists on an absolute devotion to monotheism, faith in the one and only God—and then, in the selfsame statement, the text seems to take for granted the existence of other gods, saying only that we shouldn’t have allegiance to them. But what other gods are there? Isn’t the Torah’s whole point that there is only one? The problem falls away, though, if you go back to the original Hebrew and read it carefully. The second commandment states: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other elohim before Me.” Just plug in our working definition of elohim, and suddenly it all starts to make sense: the text adjures us not to have allegiance to other “powers” besides God. For, indeed, there are other great sources of power one might choose to worship. The sun is powerful, there’s no denying that. It provides light and heat, and without it, we die. Nevertheless, the second commandment tells us that the sun is off-limits for worship because we may not have allegiance to any power other than the Almighty. As”