Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments (Hebrew Aseret ha-Dibrot, 'the ten words') are the foundational covenant stipulations given by God to Israel at Sinai, recorded in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, and inscribed by God on two stone tablets housed in the ark of the covenant. They were spoken publicly in the hearing of the assembled congregation amid thunder, lightning, fire, and trumpet sound — the most direct corporate divine speech in Scripture. The traditional division into two tables (duties to God; duties to neighbor) is found in Philo and Josephus and supported by Jesus's summary in the two great commandments (Matt. 22:37-40). Protestant and Eastern Orthodox enumeration combines the first two commandments and divides the final one; the Jewish tradition treats the prologue as the first 'word.'

ISBE addresses the historical-critical dimensions of the Decalogue. It belongs to the form-critical category of apodictic law — direct, unconditional imperatives — in contrast to the casuistic 'if-then' formulation of ancient Near Eastern law codes. The parallel Hittite suzerainty treaty form — preamble, historical prologue, stipulations, deposit, witnesses — has been applied to the Sinai covenant as a whole, with some scholars using this second-millennium BC parallel to argue for the Decalogue's antiquity. The different Sabbath grounding in Exodus (creation — Gen. 2:2-3) versus Deuteronomy (redemption from Egypt — Deut. 5:15) reflects the complementary theological emphases of each book. Jesus cited the commandments in ethical instruction (Matt. 5:21-30; 19:18-19), Paul used them to expose sin (Rom. 7:7-11) and define love (Rom. 13:9), and the Decalogue remains foundational to Christian ethics across all traditions as the revealed expression of God's moral character.