The tenth commandment looks mild next to murder and theft. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan will not let it stay mild. "Sons of Israel My people, Ye shall not be covetous companions or partakers with the covetous... neither shall any among you covet the wife of his neighbour, nor his servant, nor his handmaid, nor his ox, nor his ass nor anything that belongeth to his neighbour; because through the guilt of covetousness the government breaketh in upon the possessions of men to take them, and the wealthy are made poor, and slavery cometh upon the world" (Exodus 20:14).
The Targum supplies a cosmic consequence the Hebrew lacks, and it is a stunning piece of political theology. Covetousness — private, inward, apparently victimless — produces three public disasters:
First, the government breaketh in upon the possessions of men to take them. Tyrannical taxation. Confiscation. When citizens covet each other's goods, they eventually produce a state that covets everyone's goods. The appetite scales up.
Second, the wealthy are made poor. The covetous society cannibalizes itself. Those who had, no longer have. Economic collapse is the physics of a populace that wants what its neighbor owns.
Third, slavery cometh upon the world. This is the endpoint. When the state has eaten private wealth and the wealthy are ruined, nothing is left but human labor to sell. The society that began by envying a neighbor's ox ends by selling its own children.
Notice what the Targum has done. It has turned the final, interior commandment into a chain reaction that destroys the freedom the first commandment promised. The Decalogue began with I brought you out from the house of bondage. It ends with a warning: covet, and you will march yourself back in.
The takeaway: the last commandment protects the first. Envy undoes redemption, and the only way to stay free is to stop wanting what was never yours.