The First Commandment “You shall have no other gods before me,” is the first commandment for a reason. By making it the first commandment, this places the rest of the commandments in the context of the first, perhaps making it the root of all law. With God as the root, this gives value to upholding the law, to uphold it is now the objective good. We are of course called to uphold the “spirit of the law” rather than the law itself as individuals since sin is individual, not collective. These laws were formulated as natural theology, the Judeans certainly believed that basic ethics such as not killing, stealing, and the like should be enforced before the emergence of Abrahamic ideology.
Because of the commandments as products of natural promulgation of Jewish ethics, they were already the cultural norm. To go against these laws was to be a social outcast thus, simple social shunning was frequent until the situation was rectified. Is revenge ever justified in the Old Testament? It is never justified for man to take revenge on someone if the Commandments are broken, God speaks of taking vengeance (Dt. 32:35) but it is justified. The Apostle Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God: for it is written,” (Rms. 12:19). By separating man from God in justification, we understand that enforcing the commandments for the sake of vengeance is never justified.