Ten Commandments

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For other uses, see Ten Commandments (disambiguation).
The Ten Commandments on a monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol
This 1768 parchment (612x502 mm) by Jekuthiel Sofer emulated 1675 decalogue at the Esnoga synagogue of Amsterdam

The Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, is a list of religious and moral imperatives which, according to the Bible, were written by God, and given to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of two stone tablets. They feature prominently in Judaism and Christianity. In Biblical Hebrew language they are termed עשרת הדברים (translit. Aseret ha-Dvarîm), and in Rabbinical Hebrew עשרת הדברות (translit. Aseret ha-Dibrot), both translatable as "the ten statements". The name decalogue is derived from the Greek name δέκα λόγοι or dekalogoi ("ten statements") found in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name.

The terms Ten Commandments and Decalogue generally refer to the passages Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Some maintain that the laws mentioned in Exodus 34 are also a decalogue, commonly called the Ritual Decalogue, which may have predated the "Ethical Decalogue" of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 covered here.

Receiving the commandments

Preparations

According to the Bible text, the commandments represented the utterances of God on Mount Sinai (sometimes called Mount Horeb), directly written by God and given to Moses, then given by Moses to the people of Israel in the third month after their Exodus from Egypt. The event of Israel's receipt of the commandments followed three days of preparation at the foot of the mount:

"...God said to Moses, 'I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that all the people will hear when I speak to you. They will then believe in you forever.'...The third day arrived. There was thunder and lightning in the morning, with a heavy cloud on the mountain, and an extremely loud blast of a ram's horn. The people in the camp trembled. Moses led the people out of the camp toward the Divine Presence. They stood transfixed at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was all in smoke because of the Presence that had come down on it. God was in the fire, and its smoke went up like the smoke of a lime kiln. The entire mountain trembled violently. There was the sound of a ram's horn, increasing in volume to a great degree. Moses spoke, and God replied with a voice. God came down on Mount Sinai, to the peak of the mountain. He summoned Moses to the mountain peak, and Moses climbed up...Moses went down to the people and conveyed this to them." (Exodus 19)

Text of the commandments

The following is the text of the commonly accepted (by Christian and Jewish authorities) commandments as found in the book of Exodus:

"God spoke all these words, saying: I am God your Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, from the place of slavery. Do not have any other gods before Me. Do not represent [such] gods by any carved statue or picture of anything in the heaven above, on the earth below, or in the water below the land. Do not bow down to [such gods] or worship them. I am God your Lord, a God who demands exclusive worship. Where My enemies are concerned, I keep in mind the sin of the fathers for [their] descendants, to the third and fourth [generation]. But for those who love Me and keep My commandments, I show love for thousands [of generations]. Do not take the name of God your Lord in vain. God will not allow the one who takes His name in vain to go unpunished. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. You can work during the six weekdays and do all your tasks. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God your Lord. Do not do anything that constitutes work. [This includes] you, your son, your daughter, your slave, your maid, your animal, and the foreigner in your gates. It was during the six weekdays that God made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. God therefore blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and mother. You will then live long on the land that God your Lord is giving you. Do not commit murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not testify as a false witness against your neighbor. Do not be envious of your neighbor's house. Do not be envious of your neighbor's wife, his slave, his maid, his ox, his donkey, or anything else that is your neighbor's." (Exodus 20)

Nature of the stone tablets

According to the Bible, God inscribed the Ten Commandments into stone: "God said to Moses, 'Come up to Me, to the mountain, and remain there. I will give you the stone tablets, the Torah and the commandment that I have written for [the people's] instruction.'" (Exodus 24:12) also referred to as "tables of testimony" (Exodus 24:12, 31:18, 32:16) or "tables of the covenant" (Deuteronomy 9verses 9, 11, 15), which he gave to Moses.

Traditional Jewish sources (Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael, de-ba-Hodesh 5) discuss the placement of the ten commandments on two tablets. According to Rabbi Hanina ben Gamaliel, five commandments were engraved on the first tablet and five on the other, whereas the Sages contended that ten were written on each. While most Jewish and Christian depictions follow the first understanding, modern scholarship favours the latter, comparing it to treaty rite in the Ancient Near East, in the sense of tablets of covenant. Diplomatic treaties, such as that between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite King Hattusilis III, circa 1270 B.C.E., were duplicated on stone with a copy for each party, and the subordinate party would place their copy of the pact in the main temple to his god, in oath to the king (cf. Ezekiel 17:11-19). In a pact between a nation and its God, then, the Israelites placed both copies in their temple. [1]

Exodus 32:15 records that the tablets "were written on both their sides." The Talmud (tractate Shabbat 104a) explains that there were miracles involved with the carving on the tablets. One was that the carving went the full thickness of the tablets. There is a letter in the Hebrew alphabet called a samech that looks similar to the letter "O" in the English alphabet. The stone in the center part of the letter should have fallen out, as it was not connected to the rest of the tablet, but it did not; it miraculously remained in place. Secondly, the writing was miraculously legible from both the front and the back, even though logic would dictate that something carved through and through would show the writing in mirror image on the back.

Breaking and replacement of the tablets

After seeing that the Israelites had gone astray during his absence and his brother Aaron had made the Golden Calf, Moses broke the tablets (Exodus 32:19).

God subsequently commanded Moses to carve two other tablets like the first (Exodus 34:1). In Exodus 34:27-28Moses was commanded to recreate the tablets, and to rewrite the commandments himself. In Deuteronomy 4:13, 5:18, 9:10, 10:24, God himself appears as the writer. This second set, brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses (Exodus 34:29), was placed in the Ark, also known as the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:16, 25:21, 40:20), hence designated as the "Ark of the Testimony" (Exodus 22:16, Numbers 4:5; compare also 1 Kings 8:9). Various theories have been advanced as to why the text in Deuteronomy differs on some points with the text in Exodus (see below).

Variations between the Exodus and Deuteronomy texts