Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

dave

2024-06-12 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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dave
Votey panel for dave
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Explanation

The comic depicts God speaking to Moses (or a similar biblical figure) on a mountaintop, apparently dictating the Ten Commandments. God says: "Lord! Dave's at it again! He told me he wasn't up to anything this Sabbath, but the truth is he was murdering his parents, then using a stolen idol that he worships as a sex toy to cheat on his wife with his neighbor's sexier wife while shouting 'Goddamn!'"

Moses, overwhelmed, responds: "For fuck's sake, hold on, lemme write down a list."

The caption at the bottom reads: "Bible Fun Fact: The Ten Commandments were actually created for just one guy."

The humor comes from the premise that the Ten Commandments -- one of the most important moral codes in Western civilization -- were not actually general moral principles for all of humanity but were instead a very specific response to one particularly terrible person named Dave. The joke is that Dave managed to violate essentially every commandment simultaneously: breaking the Sabbath, murdering (honoring thy parents inverted), idol worship, stealing, adultery, coveting his neighbor's wife, and taking the Lord's name in vain. The comic suggests that before Dave, God had not felt the need to codify these rules because nobody else had been that comprehensively awful. Moses frantically writing everything down transforms the solemn moment of divine revelation into a harried bureaucratic response to one man's incredible capacity for sin. The joke also plays on the common comedy trope of rules and warning signs existing because someone, at some point, did the specific thing they prohibit.

View History (1) Original Comic