Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue, are religious and ethical directives, structured as a covenant document, that, according to the Hebrew Bible, were given by God to Moses. The text of the Ten Commandments appears in three markedly distinct versions in the Hebrew Bible: at Exodus, Deuteronomy, and the "Ritual Decalogue" of Exodus.
The biblical narrative describes how God revealed the Ten Commandments to the Israelites at Mount Sinai amidst thunder and fire, gave Moses two stone tablets inscribed with the law, which he later broke in anger after witnessing the worship of a golden calf, and then received a second set of tablets to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant. Scholars have proposed a range of dates and contexts for the origins of the Decalogue. Interpretations of its content vary widely, reflecting debates over its legal, political, and theological development, its relation to ancient treaty forms, and differing views on authorship and emphasis on ritual versus ethics.
Different religious traditions divide the seventeen verses of Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:4–21 into ten commandments in distinct ways, often influenced by theological or mnemonic priorities despite the presence of more than ten imperative statements in the texts. The Ten Commandments are the foundational core of Jewish law, connecting and supporting all other commandments and guiding Jewish ritual and ethics. Most Christian traditions regard the Ten Commandments as divinely authoritative and foundational to moral life, though they differ in interpretation, emphasis, and application within their theological frameworks. The Quran presents the Ten Commandments given to Moses as moral and legal guidance focused on monotheism, justice, and righteousness, paralleling but differing slightly from the biblical version. Interpretive differences arise from varying religious traditions, translations, and cultural contexts affecting Sabbath observance, prohibitions on killing and theft, views on idolatry, and definitions of adultery.
Some scholars have criticized the Ten Commandments as outdated, authoritarian, and potentially harmful in certain interpretations, such as those justifying harsh punishments or religious violence, like the Galician Peasant Uprising of 1846. In the United States, they have remained a contentious symbol in public spaces and schools, with debates intensifying through the 20th and 21st centuries and culminating in recent laws in Texas and Louisiana mandating their display—laws now facing legal challenges over separation of church and state. The Ten Commandments have been depicted or referenced in various media, including two major films by Cecil B. DeMille, the Polish series Dekalog, the American comedy The Ten, multiple musicals and films, and a satirical scene in Mel Brooks’s History of the World Part I.
Terminology
The Ten Commandments are mentioned at Exodus, Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy. In all sources, the terms are translatable as "the ten words", "the ten sayings", or "the ten matters". In Mishnaic Hebrew they are called עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת, a precise equivalent.In the Septuagint, the 2nd–3rd BC century Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the phrase was translated as δεκάλογος, dekálogos or "ten-word"; this Greek word became decalogus in Latin, which entered the English language as "Decalogue", providing an alternative name for the Ten Commandments. The Tyndale and Coverdale English Christian biblical translations used "ten verses". The Geneva Bible used "ten commandments", whose convention was followed by the Bishops' Bible and the Authorized Version. Most major English versions henceforth have used the word "commandments".
The stone tablets, as opposed to the Ten Commandments inscribed on them, are called , "tablets of the covenant", or , "tablets of the testimony".
Biblical narrative
The biblical narrative of the revelation at Sinai begins in Exodus 19 after the arrival of the children of Israel at Mount Sinai. On the morning of the third day of their encampment, "there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud", and the people assembled at the base of the mount. After "the came down upon mount Sinai", Moses went up briefly and returned to prepare the people, and then in Exodus 20 "God spoke" to all the people the words of the covenant, that is, the "ten commandments" as it is written. Modern biblical scholarship differs as to whether describes the people of Israel as having directly heard all or some of the decalogue, or whether the laws are only passed to them through Moses.The people were afraid to hear more and moved "afar off", and Moses responded with "Fear not." Nevertheless, he drew near the "thick darkness" where "the presence of the Lord" was to hear the additional statutes and "judgments", all which he "wrote" in the "book of the covenant" which he read to the people the next morning, and they agreed to be obedient and do all that the had said. Moses escorted a select group consisting of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and "seventy of the elders of Israel" to a location on the mount where they worshipped "afar off" and they "saw the God of Israel" above a "paved work" like clear sapphire stone.
The mount was covered by the cloud for six days, and on the seventh day Moses went into the midst of the cloud and was "in the mount forty days and forty nights." And Moses said, "the delivered unto me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly." Before the full forty days expired, the children of Israel collectively decided that something had happened to Moses, and compelled Aaron to fashion a golden calf, and he "built an altar before it" and the people "worshipped" the calf.
File:Rembrandt - Moses with the Ten Commandments - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|alt=This is an image of an oil on canvas picture by Rembrandt of a bearded man representing Moses with two tablets of stone of the ten commandments held high in both hands.|Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law by Rembrandt
After the full forty days, Moses came down from the mountain with the tablets of stone: "And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount." After the events in chapters 32 and 33, the told Moses, "Hew thee two tablets of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tablets the words that were in the first tablets, which thou brakest." "And he wrote on the tablets, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the gave them unto me." These tablets were later placed in the Ark of the Covenant.
Commandments text and numbering
Religious traditions
Surviving Hebrew manuscripts from before the seventh century, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, format the text of the commandments as a single seamless flow of prose together with its context. Since the text elaborates on some commands more than others, it contains far more than ten grammatical sentences. Due to this, the originally intended way of grouping them into ten enumerable commands is not obvious from the text itself. Since then, various traditions have emerged which divide the same text into ten in different ways.By the tenth century, the Masoretic Text had established consistent formatting for the Hebrew text which has closed portion breaks that correspond to the Lutheran divisions in the chart below.
Translations into other languages, both before and after the Masoretic Text, are generally arranged on the page according to the style of the target language, without preserving the layout of whatever Hebrew they are working from. So, for example, Modern English Bible translations tend to arrange the text into the familiar notion of paragraphs, and two different translators may put paragraph breaks in different places, with or without attempting to satisfy the number ten.
Different religious traditions categorize the seventeen verses of Exodus 20:1–17 and their parallels in Deuteronomy 5:4–21 into ten commandments in different ways as shown in the table. Some suggest that the number ten is a choice to aid memorization rather than a matter of theology.
Categorization
There are two major approaches to categorizing the commandments. One approach distinguishes the prohibition against other gods from the prohibition against images :- LXX: Septuagint, generally followed by Eastern Orthodox Christians.
- R: Reformed Christians follow Calvin's Institutes which follows the Septuagint; this system is also in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
- P: Ashburnham Pentateuch?
- T: Jewish Talmud, makes the "prologue" the first "saying" or "matter."
- S: Samaritan Pentateuch, contains additional instruction to Moses about making a sacrifice to Yahweh, which Samaritans regard as the 10th commandment.
- A: Augustine, combines verses 3–6 into a single commandment, similar to the grouping found in the Talmud, but omits the prologue as a commandment and divides the prohibition on coveting into two commandments, following the word order of Deuteronomy 5:21 rather than Exodus 20:17.
- C: Roman Catholicism largely follows Augustine, which was reiterated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church changing "the sabbath" into "the lord's day" and dividing Exodus 20:17, prohibiting covetousness, into two commandments, in order to fulfill the number 10.
- L: Lutherans follow Luther's Large Catechism, which follows Augustine and Roman Catholic tradition but subordinates the prohibition of images to the sovereignty of God in the First Commandment and uses the word order of Exodus 20:17 rather than Deuteronomy 5:21 for the ninth and tenth commandments.