I’ve noticed lately that some legislatures in the United States are attempting to impose on schools an obligation to display the “Ten Commandments.”1 Ironically, this requirement to display a religious text is in the nation that boasts of its “freedom of religion” and its “separation of church and State.” Apparently “freedom of religion” is not the same as “freedom from religion” so those citizens who subscribe to a different religion, or to no religion at all, don’t get a say. But putting the irony aside, as a biblical scholar I have a problem with the version of the “ten commandments” which these legislators are so keen to display.2 (I also have several doubts about whether the legislators actually keep these commandments themselves, but that’s another story.)
So here is my problem. The Bible does indeed refer to “the ten commandments” (although the phrase in Hebrew technically means “the ten words” or “the ten things/matters“) but it has a different list to the Christianised one the politicians want to display. Let me explain. The ten rules which are commonly known as the Ten Commandments are listed in two places in the Bible: Exodus 20:1-17 (see below) and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. These lists are slightly different (for example, they both have a commandment to keep the sabbath day but provide different reasons for doing so) but are substantially the same. The differences between the lists are often used by some scholars to support the view that the two lists come from different sources and I’ve written about the editing and redaction of the Bible often enough that I won’t go into it here, except to say that there are several other inconsistencies between the accounts in Exodus and Deuteronomony which also support this opinion held by a vast number of scholars.
Deuteronomy says God wrote these ten commandments, or words/matters, on two tablets of stone and gave them to Moses (5:22, and earlier in 4:13). After Moses broke these two stone tablets God told him to make two more and to write these ten commandments again (Deut 10:1-4). However, Exodus tells a different story. Despite the heading in some English translations, Exodus 20 does not actually refer to these rules as “the ten commandments.” It tells the story of God giving these rules, and others, to Moses on Mount Sinai. A few chapters later (24) we read that God told Moses to come up the mountain and there God would give him “the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for [Israel’s] instruction” (but hasn’t God already given Moses the ten commandments in chapter 20?) Later, after a lengthy and detailed description of the tent (or tabernacle) which Moses was to erect for meeting with God (25:1-31:11), and instructions for keeping the Sabbath (31:12-17), Exodus returns to the story and says “When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God” (31:18), although it doesn’t tell us precisely what was written on them.
As the story unfolds in Exodus Moses broke these stone tablets in a fit of anger because he found the people of Israel worshipping a golden calf (32:19). Later, we have the story of how Moses was instructed by God to make two new tablets and to bring them up the mountain so God could write them again (34:1, although at the end of the story [vv.27-28] we are told without any further explanation that Moses himself wrote them, not God). The really interesting thing is that the list of ten commandments in this chapter is completely different to the versions in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5! Here it is:
Observe what I command you today. See, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you.
1. You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles (for you shall worship no other god, because the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).
2. You shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to their gods, someone among them will invite you, and you will eat of the sacrifice. And you will take wives from among their daughters for your sons, and their daughters who prostitute themselves to their gods will make your sons also prostitute themselves to their gods.
3. You shall not make cast idols.
4. You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.
5. All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep. The firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem. No one shall appear before me empty-handed.
6. Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest.
7. You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out nations before you, and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land when you go up to appear before the LORD your God three times in the year.
8. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, and the sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning.
9. The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the LORD your God.
10. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
Exodus 34:11-26
Just to emphasise that these rules are the actual “ten commandments” the account ends with this:
The LORD said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
Exodus 34:27-28
This is definitely not the list of ten commandments which most people are familiar with, but it is the only list in Exodus which is actually called “the ten commandments.” The fact that Deuteronomy has a completely different list is interesting. It’s also interesting how Exodus seems to jump all over the place with this story. Many scholars put this down to the edited or redacted nature of Exodus – there is a great deal of evidence that Exodus, like Genesis, came together over a period of time from a variety of sources which explains the “disjointed” nature of both books. Deuteronomy has several stories and laws which are so different from the other accounts that it is quite evidently from a different source or tradition altogether.
A final note about my heading: “The Ten (or Eleven) Commandments.” Despite the efforts of some translators to add a heading to Exodus 20 saying “The ten commandments” the Hebrew version doesn’t use the term or even mention that there are ten of them. In fact, if you count them there are actually eleven:
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
Exodus 20:1-17
- You shall have no other gods before me.
- You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
- You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
- You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
- Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
- Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Has no one ever noticed that?
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- For example, the Texas State Senate has recently passed a Bill which will require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every classroom.
- The version which the Texas State Senate has specified doesn’t appear in any Bible that I know of! It is a highly Christianised version which has had Judaic elements removed.
מִקְרָא Mikra: Biblical studies 
“10. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.”
That sounds silly. I think it was Marten Luther who already interpreted as “a kid that is in his mother’s milk” i.o.w. an unweaned kid. It is repeated three times in the OT and notably also as conclusion of the commandments of the three yearly feasts in Exodus 23:14-19:
“14Three times a year you are to celebrate a feast to Me.
15You are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Breada as I commanded you: At the appointed time in the month of Abib you are to eat unleavened bread for seven days, because that was the month you came out of Egypt. No one may appear before Me empty-handed.
16You are also to keep the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the produce from what you sow in the field.
And keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather your produce from the field.
17Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord GOD.
18You must not offer the blood of My sacrifices with anything leavened, nor may the fat of My feast remain until morning.
19Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
To me it sounds like a peasant or pastoral wisdom-saying that suggests to follow the natural yearly cycle and do everything at it’s appropriate time accordingly.
I seriously doubt that the same line in Exodus 34:16 has a different function, so it probably is no separate commandment in it’s own right, but a similar concluding exhortation to do everything timely.
I found in my bookmarks this:
It has equal puzzlement about the different accounts in Deuteronomy and Exodus.
On the ’10’ commandments, There is an interesting table in my “Jewish Study Bible” of the different divisions of Exodus 20 into 10. As you say in your comment, the Catholics – and Lutherans – have vv2-6 as one command, and v17 as two. Eastern Orthodoc and most Protestant traditions, and a minority Jewish tranditions have vv2-3 as the first commandment, and v17 as one. Most Jewish traditions have v2 as the first and v3-6 as the second.
Part of the problem is that there are, if I have counted them correctly, 13 or 14 verbs of commanding – if I can express it that way. Verse 2 does not have one, so I don’t see how that is a separate commandment, although it could be a separate ‘word’.
Thomas Farrar, who can always be relied on to make valuable comments, has informed me that in the Catholic tradition the first three commandments in my list above are read as one, and the last commandment is read as two (9. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. 10 You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.) If we are guided by the negative particle לֹא then it would make sense to split Ex 20:21 into two commandments. By the same token 7-10 should be read as three, so we probably should read this list as “the twelve commandments.”
Amen 🙌