The five commandments

The five commandments are the ethical core that Prince Dmitri Ivanovitch Nekhludoff extracts from the Sermon on the Mount during the climactic night of his spiritual awakening, after he has witnessed the death of Anatole Kryltzoff and the full horror of the prison system. They represent not abstract ideals but, in his newly clarified understanding, simple, clear, practical laws whose observance would establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and abolish the violence and injustice that have filled him with despair.

The Five Commandments as Discovered by Nekhludoff

Nekhludoff, reading the Gospel in his hotel room after the devastating visit to the prison, identifies five distinct commandments. The first, drawn from Matthew 5:21-26, forbids not only murder but also anger against a brother and the use of contemptuous language such as "Raca"; it requires reconciliation before offering a gift at the altar. The second, from Matthew 5:27-32, forbids not only adultery but also the lustful gaze, and demands absolute faithfulness to a spouse once a union has been formed. The third, from Matthew 5:33-37, prohibits all oaths, insisting that a simple "yes" or "no" should suffice. The fourth, from Matthew 5:38-42, overturns the law of retaliation: one must not demand an eye for an eye but instead offer the other cheek, forgive injuries, and never refuse a request for help. The fifth, from Matthew 5:43-48, commands not merely the toleration but the active love of enemies, including service and assistance to those who persecute.

The Context of Discovery

This revelation comes at the end of a long moral journey. Nekhludoff had earlier, during his first summer with his aunts, been an enthusiastic admirer of Herbert Spencer and Henry George, and had given away his father's land to the peasants out of a conviction that private landholding was unjust. But that youthful idealism had been crushed by army life and the "mania of selfishness" that accompanied it. He had betrayed and abandoned Katusha, and for years had lived a life of lies, adultery, and luxury. The trial, where he saw Katusha condemned to penal servitude through a judicial error that was partly his own fault, had triggered a painful "cleansing of the soul." He had resolved to tell the truth, to marry her, to give up his land. Yet these resolutions had wavered; in Petersburg he had been tempted by the flattery of Mariette and the comforts of aristocratic society. It is only after the Senate rejects the appeal, after he has seen convicts die of sunstroke, after Kryltzoff's agonized death and the old man's defiant accusation that the officials bear "the seal of Antichrist," that Nekhludoff opens the Testament given him by the Englishman and finds the answer he has been seeking.

The Meaning of the Commandments for Nekhludoff

The five commandments provide Nekhludoff with a solution to the question that has tormented him throughout his journey: why does the terrible evil of the prison system exist, and how can it be ended? He had seen that men who were themselves sinful were trying to punish and correct other sinful men, and that this effort only produced more depravity. The parable of the servant who was forgiven a vast debt but then imprisoned his fellow servant for a small one suddenly illuminated the whole system: the officials, the judges, the jailers were acting as if they had the right to punish, forgetting that they themselves were debtors who had been forgiven everything. The five commandments, especially the law of unlimited forgiveness, showed that the only way to break the cycle of violence was for each person to acknowledge his own sin and cease judging others. Nekhludoff realizes that the usual objection—"What is one to do with evil-doers?"—has no force because punishment has been proved not to lessen crime or improve criminals, but only to corrupt both the punished and the punishers. Society and order exist, he now understands, not because of the officials who judge and punish, but because in spite of them, people still pity and love one another.

The Five Commandments as a Program for Life

For Nekhludoff, the commandments are not a set of prohibitions but a positive program. The first commandment demands active reconciliation. The second demands purity and fidelity. The third demands truthfulness without evasion. The fourth demands non-resistance and generosity. The fifth demands active love for enemies. He sees that if men were brought up to obey these rules, the "monstrous confusion" of existing social life would be replaced by the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The parable of the vineyard confirms this: the husbandmen who imagined the vineyard was their own and killed those who reminded them of the Master are a figure for all who live for their own enjoyment, forgetting that they were sent by some one's will and for some reason. The only reasonable meaning of life, Nekhludoff concludes, is to fulfil these commandments; every deviation from them is a mistake that brings its own retribution.

Significance in the Novel's Structure

The discovery of the five commandments is the culmination of Nekhludoff's moral arc, which mirrors the novel's title, "Resurrection." He had experienced earlier "cleansings of the soul"—during the summer with his aunts, when he gave up his father's land, and when he joined the army ready to sacrifice his life—but each time the temptations of the world had re-engulfed him. This final awakening is different because it is grounded not in a vague aspiration but in a specific, actionable set of laws that he can apply to every situation. The commandments resolve the central tension of the novel between the "animal man" and the "spiritual man" by providing the spiritual man with a clear rule of conduct. They also answer the question that has haunted Nekhludoff since the trial: whether he is mad for seeing what others do not, or whether the officials who calmly perpetrate such cruelty are mad. The commandments confirm that the existing order is built on a fundamental error—the error of believing that men can punish each other—and that the only sane response is to live according to a different law. The novel ends not with a resolution of external events but with Nekhludoff's inner certainty that a "perfectly new life" has dawned, and that the business of his life is now to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.