The original 10 commandments.

37818:
I've never seen anywhere in God's word that He describes how many commandments there are...only that there is His Law, and that it has commandments.
I'm also not saying that there is a number somewhere in the Bible for how many there are...just that I do not remember seeing it.


Let's start here.
Warning: This will be lengthy!


I believe the Lord Jesus stated it best:

" But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.
35 Then one of them, [which was] a lawyer, asked [him a question], tempting him, and saying,
36 Master, which [is] the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." ( Matthew 22:34-40 )


So the ten are, in reality, based on and are developed from, two.


With that said, going back to Exodus, I ignore the verse numberings that were introduced sometime in the 15th century, and come up with this:

" And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I [am] the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth:
5 thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me;
6 and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbour’s." ( Exodus 30:1-17 )


Part two, next.

 

Then there's Deuteronomy 5:6-21:


" I [am] the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
7 Thou shalt have none other gods before me.

8 Thou shalt not make thee [any] graven image, [or] any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the waters beneath the earth:
9 thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me,
10 and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.

11 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold [him] guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

12 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
13 Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:
14 but the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the Lord thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
15 And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and [that] the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

17 Thou shalt not kill.

18 Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
19 Neither shalt thou steal.
20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.

21 Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any [thing] that [is] thy neighbour’s."



I also believe that there is a major misunderstanding that has been perpetuated upon believers for a very long time...that there were ** only ten commandments on the tables of stone. Notice that at the beginning of God calling Moses up to Mount Sinai, that He gave him much more than just ten; He developed the Law, the plans for the Ark, the vestments, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and much more in chapters 20-32, specifically 24-32.

He begins by calling Moses up to the mount here:

" And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them." ( Exodus 24:12 )

He then ends, 11 chapters later, by stating this:

" And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God." ( Exodus 31:18 )

So, it took a while for God to give Moses the Law....so long that the people began to complain, urge Aaron to make an idol, and the Lord to get angry at their idolatry...so much so that He thought to wipe them out and start over with a new nation from Moses ( Exodus 32:7-14 ).


** EDIT: I've been corrected on this statement below, and humbly withdraw it.


Part 3, next.

 

Finally, Scripture states this:

" And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony [were] in his hand: the tables [were] written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other [were] they written.
16 And the tables [were] the work of God, and the writing [was] the writing of God, graven upon the tables." ( Exodus 32:15-16 )

To me, this means that the entire Law was written on two large tables of stone ( perhaps slate ), each on both sides...not like the movie, "The Ten Commandments" has it, with just ten commandments, 5 on each facing and nothing on the backs.


May God bless you in your trials.

 

With respect, " I am the Lord your God..." is not a commandment.
I see it as a statement of fact.

To me, the Lord begins His commandments by commanding, which is what I've highlighted in bold in the two passages further above. I will, given your gracious reminder of Exodus 34:28, amend my above statements to say that God wrote the ten commandments ( and only the ten commandments ) on both tablets of stone:

" And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments." ( Exodus 34:28 )

Good catch, and I thank you for pointing it out to me. I stand corrected.
As for what constituted the ten?

Every time God changed the "subject" and commanded, I see Him making a new commandment in Exodus 30:1-17.

Verse 3
Verse 4
Verse 7
Verse 8
Verse 12
Verse 13
Verse 14
Verse 15
Verse 16
Verse 17


I personally ignore verse 2 as being on the tablets, but it could have been as seen here ( only in Hebrew ):


It could also have been as seen here ( only in Hebrew ):




That is what I see as written on both the original tablets and the ones that He had Moses remake.
With respect, I don't think that this subject is something that must be determined for the profit of believers ( Titus 3:8-9 ), so I will make this my final post.



May God bless you, and may He reward you greatly in your studies of His word.

 

Deuteronomy 4:13. 'So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, the Ten Commandments: and He wrote them on two tablets of stone.
Deuteronomy 10:4. 'And He wrote on the tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments, which the LORD had spoken to you.........'
It is also important to note that only those Ten Commandments were written on stone tablets (Deuteronomy 5:22). The rest of the Mosaic law appears to have been given to Moses via the mediation of angels (Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2:2). This has implications for our understanding of 2 Corinthians 3:3. 'Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.' In the light of Deuteronomy 5:22, what was written on the hearts of the Corinthian Christians was the Decalogue, the moral law of God.

 

Thanks, Martin.
Sometimes my forgetfulness gets the best of me.

I've spent the better part of 3 years in the New Testament, so it looks like I'll be going back to the Old for awhile.

 

I thought the first commandment was to be fruitful and multiply. The 2nd was to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

 

I am not opposed to either layout.

Pros of OPs method
- follows Jewish tradition (I guess that is a pro)
-introduces a command that identifies who the true God is as part of the 10

Cons of OPs method
- First command is not really a command
- Combines two commands about worshipping God and graven images into one (this also being done by people like the catholics allows them to ignore the graven image part and make graven images)

Altogether, despite the OPs fervency, I dont think the scripture can be said to clearly show his method to be right. And even if the first verses are not a command in the 10, they are still right there to the extent that pretty much everyone who accepts rhe 10 commandments knows we are talking about the God who led the Israelites out of Egypt.

 

Perhaps the first fallacy is in numbering them. The numbering doesn’t appear in the text, and is thus manmade. The first part might be considered a “signature”, but is what the “me” refers to and thus an integral part of the decalogue. If you break it, you’ve broken it. And we all have.