The Ten Commandments stand near the centre of the moral teaching of both Judaism and Christianity. Given to Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai, and recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, they have shaped law, conscience, and culture for more than three thousand years.

The setting

The commandments were not given to a people in the abstract but to a people God had just rescued. They open with a reminder of that rescue: “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). The commandments are framed, then, not as the terms for earning God’s favour but as the response of a people already redeemed — the shape of life with the God who saved them.

The commandments

In the words of the King James Version, in summary:

  1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
  2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor bow down to it.
  3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.
  4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
  5. Honour thy father and thy mother.
  6. Thou shalt not kill.
  7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
  8. Thou shalt not steal.
  9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
  10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife, or possessions.

Two tables

Christian teaching has long observed that the commandments fall into two groups, often called the “two tables.” The first commandments concern our relationship with God — worship, reverence, and rest. The remainder concern our relationship with one another — family, life, marriage, property, truth, and the desires of the heart.

This division is no accident. When Jesus was asked for the greatest commandment, he gave two: to love God with all one’s heart, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself (Matthew 22:37–39). The two tables of the law are simply those two loves, spelled out.

Why the numbering differs

Readers are sometimes surprised to find the commandments numbered differently in different traditions. The text is the same; only the way of dividing it varies.

  • The Jewish tradition treats the opening declaration, “I am the LORD thy God,” as the first “word,” and joins the commands against other gods and graven images.
  • The Roman Catholic and Lutheran tradition also joins those two commands, and so, to keep the count at ten, divides the final command against coveting into two.
  • The Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican tradition keeps the command against graven images as a separate, second commandment.

The differences are real but small, and they touch the arithmetic rather than the substance.

More than a list of rules

It is easy to read the Ten Commandments as a set of prohibitions. But the Christian tradition has always understood them more deeply — as a description of what a flourishing human life looks like. Behind “thou shalt not steal” lies a call to honest work and generosity; behind “thou shalt not bear false witness,” a whole life of truthfulness.

Read this way, the commandments are not a cage but a map. They mark out the path of love — love of God and love of neighbour — along which a human life was always meant to run.