What the Prohibition Against Coveting Actually Forbids

"You shall not covet your neighbor's house" is a general statement; "his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, or his donkey" is a specification. With a general statement followed by a specification, the general includes only what is in the specification. When it then says "or anything that is your neighbor's," it generalizes again. With a general statement, then a specification, then a general statement, you may infer only things like the specification: just as the specification refers explicitly to something one can buy and sell, so too anything one can buy and sell. Or perhaps: just as the specification refers explicitly to movable property that has no fixed security [is not real estate], so too I should include only movable property that has no fixed security? When it says in Deuteronomy "his field" (Deuteronomy 5:18), it shows: just as the specification refers explicitly to something one can buy and sell, so too anything one can buy and sell. Or perhaps: just as the specification refers explicitly to something that can come into your possession only with the owner's consent, so too I should include only something that can come into your possession only with the owner's consent. This excludes a case where you covet his daughter for your son, or his son for your daughter; or even where one covets merely in speech. The verse therefore teaches "You shall not covet the silver and gold that is on them and take it for yourself" (Deuteronomy 7:25): just as there the prohibition applies only when one performs an act, so too here it applies only when one performs an act.