God spoke the Ten Commandments to Moses and the people of Israel from Mount Sinai shortly after He had led them out of their bondage in Egypt, but the words God spoke are not at that time referred to as “the ten commandments.” They were given as recorded in Exodus 20:1-17:

¹And God spake all these words, saying, ²I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. ³Thou shalt have no other gods before me. ⁴Thou 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: ⁵Thou 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; ⁶And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. ⁷Thou 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. ⁸Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: ¹⁰But 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: ¹¹For 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.

¹²Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. ¹³Thou shalt not kill. ¹⁴Thou shalt not commit adultery. ¹⁵Thou shalt not steal. ¹⁶Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. ¹⁷Thou 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.

It was not until later in the time that the Israelites were camped at Sinai that Moses went back up the mountain and received the two tablets of stone on which these commandments were inscribed (Exodus 31:18); and it was not until later still, after Moses had broken the first set of stone tablets in anger at the idolatry of the Israelites and was given another set, that the stone tablets were described as containing ten commandments, or rather, according to the Hebrew, “ten words” (Exodus 34:28). This is an interesting description because when one looks closely at the text of Exodus 20:2-17, one sees that in these verses there are fourteen statements that use “shalt,” “shalt not,” or another imperative verb, plus an introductory statement that is counted as the first of the commandments by some Jewish and Christian traditions:

1. ²I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt...
2. ³Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
3. ⁴Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image...
4. ⁵Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them...
5. ⁷Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.
6. ⁸Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy...
7. ⁹Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work.
8. ¹⁰But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work...
9. ¹²Honour thy father and thy mother
10. ¹³Thou shalt not kill.
11. ¹⁴Thou shalt not commit adultery.
12. ¹⁵Thou shalt not steal.
13. ¹⁶Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
14. ¹⁷Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house,
15. ¹⁷...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.

The problem, then, is to divide the above fifteen statements, which span sixteen verses, into the ten commands (or “words”) that were inscribed on the stone tablets at Mt. Sinai. A few obviously refer to the same commandment. The commands in vv. 8-10 are seen by all traditions to refer to the keeping of the Sabbath. (Though one might note that, technically speaking, “Six days shalt thou labor” does not have the same meaning as “Remember the seventh day,” and therefore one might insist, if one were of a legalistic bent, that here we have a separate command that says we have to work six days a week. But nobody, as far as I know, has ever taken it that way.)

A couple of other cases are not so clear, particularily vv. 2-6. Some traditions see v. 2 (“I am the Lord thy God”) as the first commandment, while others see it as only part of the first commandment, as an introduction to all the commandments, or as not a part of the Ten Commandments at all. As for vv. 3-6, the various traditions see in them either one or two commandments (counting “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” as either meaning the same thing or as two separate commandments).

Those traditions that see only one commandment in vv. 2-6 (however they count v. 2) must come up with an additional commandment to get a total of ten, so v. 17 is counted as two because of the two “shalt not’s” in it (“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife”). The first “shalt not” gets its own place as commandment nine and the other shares a place as commandment ten along with the other items in the list of things we are forbidden to covet in v. 17. But the problem here is that in the parallel passage of Deutoronomy 5:6-21 (where Moses is addressing the Israelites and summing up events for them before they enter the Promised Land forty years after leaving Sinai) the order of the “shalt not’s” is reversed—“thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” comes before “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.” Two traditions (the Jewish tradition of the Torah scrolls and the Lutheran tradition) go with the order in Exodus, while one tradition (the Roman Catholic tradition) goes with the order in Deuteronomy.

I’ve been referring to “traditions” of numbering the Ten Commandments. These are specified in the accompanying table and further described in the following paragraphs.

Jewish (Torah scrolls)
A Torah scroll, which contains the five books of Moses and is kept in the Ark of each synagogue, is hand-copied from an existing Torah scroll in conformance to an exacting process by a highly trained scribe called a sofer. This process has resulted in an extremely accurate transmission of the Hebrew text, going back (according to Jewish tradition) to Moses himself. Therefore this tradition potentially represents the oldest way of numbering the Ten Commandments; however, the oldest complete scroll now in existence dates to only about A.D. 1200, though a scroll fragment that contains the Ten Commandments was found among the Dead Sea scrolls, which date back to around 50 B.C.

The numbering of the Ten Commandments in a Torah scroll is shown by division of the text into paragraphs or by spaces between the lines. These show us that v. 2 was taken as a preface, vv. 3-6 were taken as the first commandment, and v. 17 was split into two commandments with “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house” as the ninth and the rest as the tenth commandment.¹

Jewish (Philo)
Philo was a Jewish scholar who lived in Alexandria from about 20 B.C. to about A.D. 50. In his work The Decalogue he divides the commands into two tables of five each:

XII. (50) These, then, were the things which it was necessary to explain beforehand. But now we must turn to the commands themselves, and investigate everything which is marked by especial importance or difference in them. Now God divided them, being ten, as they are, into two tables of five each, which he engraved on two pillars. And the first five have the precedence and pre-eminence in honour; but the second five have an inferior place assigned to them. But both the tables are beautiful and advantageous to life, opening to men wrought and level roads kept within limits by one end, so as to secure the unwavering and secure progress of that soul which is continually desiring what is most excellent. (51) Now the most excellent five were of this character, they related to the monarchial principle on which the world is governed; to images and statues, and in short to all erections of any kind made by hand; to the duty of not taking the name of God in vain; to that of keeping the holy seventh day in a manner worthy of its holiness; to paying honour to parents both separately to each, and commonly to both. So that of the one table the beginning is the God and Father and Creator of the universe; and the end are one’s parents, who imitate his nature, and so generate the particular individuals. And the other table of five contains all the prohibitions against adulteries, and murder, and theft, and false witness, and covetousness.²

From the fact that he earlier states that the commands of the Decalogue all have the form “thou shalt...” or “thou shalt not...”³ we can say Philo doesn’t regard v. 2 as part of the numbered ten commanmdents; also a little later in the work he explicitly names the command in v. 3 as being the first commandment,⁴ the commands in vv. 4-6 as being in the second, and the command in v. 7 as being the next commandment after that.⁵

The Septuagint, produced in Alexandria sometime in the second century B.C., also used this numbering,⁶ and so did the church father Origen, who lived in Alexandria from about A.D. 185 to about A.D. 225. As a result this Philonic numbering is also sometimes referred to as the “Alexandrian numbering” and is seen as representing the preference of Hellenistic Jews.⁷ This numbering is also used by Josephus, a Judean military commander who defected and became a Roman citizen and historian in the first century A. D.

Jewish (Talmudic/Modern)
The Talmud, which was written down late in the second century A.D. from earlier oral traditions by Jewish scholars and rabbis, counts Exodus 20:2 (“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”) as the first commandment and v. 3 as the second (“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”), with vv. 4-6 taken as further commentary on it. That is, like the reading in the Torah scrolls, it combines vv. 3-6 into one commandment; but unlike the reading in the Torah scrolls, it numbers v. 2 as the first commandment instead of taking it as a preface to the commandments and, thus having eliminated the need to split v. 17 to make a total of ten commandments, takes all of it as the tenth commandment. This is the Jewish numbering used down to today.⁸

Eastern Orthodox
The Eastern Orthodox churches follow the Philonic numbering in counting v. 4 (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”) as a separate commandment, but differ from it in including v. 2 (“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt”) with v. 3 (“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”) in the first commandment instead of leaving it out of the formal numbering of the ten.⁹

Roman Catholic
Augustine (A.D. 354-430), in his work Questions on Exodus (Book II of Questions on the Heptateuch), puts all of vv. 3-6 into the first commandment, saying vv. 4-6 explain what v. 3 means, so they belong together. He doesn’t include v. 2 (“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”) either in the commandments or as a preface. To make ten commandments he splits v. 17 into two, putting “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” into the ninth commandment and everything else in v. 17 (house, manservant, maidservant, ox, ass, anything that is thy neighbor’s) into the tenth commandment.¹⁰ This reverses the order of “wife” and “house” in the list of things we are forbidden to covet in Exodus 20:17, but is the order Moses uses in Deuteronomy 5:21 when he repeats the commandments. The Roman Catholic Church has used this numbering ever since, with the exception that it includes v. 2 along with vv. 3-5a in the first commandment.¹¹

Lutheran
Luther kept the Catholic numbering but with minor differences in the way Exodus 20:2 is treated in relation to the other commandments and in the way v. 17 is split into two commandments.

The first commandment is listed as “You shall have no other gods” in modern editions of both the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism,¹² so that’s the way I’ve shown it on the accompanying table. However, a footnote to the first commandment in the Small Catechism in the Tappert edition of The Book of Concord says “The Nuremberg editions of 1531 and 1558 read: ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.’ In some editions since the sixteenth century ‘I am the Lord your God’ was printed separately as an introduction to the entire Decalogue...” In any case, we know that, as in the Roman Catholic numbering, vv. 3-6 are regarded as belonging together in the first commandment because the second commandment is v. 7, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain;” and in his discussion of the first commandment in the Large Catechism, Luther plainly shows he considers the making of graven images prohibited in v. 4 to be a subcategory of the idolatry prohibited in v. 3:

Accordingly the heathen actually fashion their fancies and dreams about God into an idol and entrust themselves to an empty nothing. So it is with all idolatry. Idolatry does not consist merely of erecting an image and praying to it. It is primarily in the heart, which pursues other things and seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils.¹³

This is not to say that Luther thought the Roman Catholic use of images was completely OK, just that—unlike many or most of the Reformed, as we shall see below—he didn’t see the prohibition of images standing alone as a commandment that applied to every kind of representational art in the church; it applied only to images set up to be worshipped or prayed to. Therefore it is included in the meaning of “thou shalt have no other gods“ and is not numbered as a separate commandment. Even though in this he keeps the Catholic numbering of the commandments, by doing so he is not agreeing with the Catholic teaching on images, much less with the many superstitious practices that had grown up around them.

The second difference from the Catholic numbering in Luther’s version is that in splitting the list of things in v. 17 that we are forbidden to covet into two commandments, Luther keeps the order of Exodus instead of using the order of Deuteronomy 5:21. He makes “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house” into the ninth commandment, and puts everything else in the list (wife, manservant, maidservant, ox, ass, anything that is thy neighbor’s) into the tenth commandment. If Luther had any particular reason for this other than simply keeping to the ordering of the Exodus account, I’ve not been able to find any place he wrote about it.¹⁴

Reformed
The Reformed are that branch of the Reformation that grew out of Ulrich Zwingli’s leadership in Zurich, Switzerland. Leadership fell to Heinrich Bullinger after Zwingli died in battle in 1531 leading the Protestant cantons of Switzlerland against the Catholic cantons, but it was John Calvin in Geneva who later became the most dominant figure in the movement and whose teaching has become the most permanently associated with it.

Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is the systematic presentation of his doctrine. When he comes to the arrangement of the ten commandments (2.8.12), he says those who include all of Exodus 20:3-6 in one commandment have “removed” the commandment against graven images, or have at least “hidden” it. He insists that it is a separate commandment. He also says they “foolishly cut in halves” the commandment about not coveting (v. 17), and that in fact the Catholic numbering was “unknown in a purer time,” i.e., before Augustine.¹⁵

Consequently, Calvin uses the Alexandrian numbering of Philo, Origen and Josephus, which he seems to think is the one genuine numbering that existed before Augustine. The only difference is that Calvin places a greater emphasis on v. 2 as being a necessary introduction to the commandments. He says, “Whether you consider the first sentence as part of the first commandment or whether you read it separately does not matter to me. As long as you do not deny that this sentence is some kind of introduction to the whole law.”¹⁶ As a result, most Reformed sources today identify it as the preface to the ten commandments.¹⁷ Note, however, that there are some Reformed sources which instead include it in the first commandment—the Heidelberg Catechism, for example.¹⁸

The one thing Calvin and his followers were agreed upon was that the prohibition against making graven images did not belong in the first commandment but should stand on its own as one of the Ten Commandments. It was somehow clear to them that it had a much wider application than the rest of Exodus 20:3-6 would suggest, that it went beyond the mere prohibition of the setting up of an image of a false god to worship and bow down to. Thus the Westminster Larger Catechism on the Second Commandment:

Q. 108. What are the duties required in the second commandment?

A. The duties required in the second commandment are, the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath instituted in his Word; particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the name of Christ; the reading, preaching, and hearing of the Word; the administration and receiving of the sacraments; church government and discipline; the ministry and maintenance thereof; religious fasting; swearing by the name of God, and vowing unto him: as also the disapproving, detesting, opposing, all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.

Q. 109. What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all, or of any of the three Persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.¹⁹

The reasons why the Reformed can find all of this in Exodus 20:4-6 are very interesting in themselves, but they go well beyond the scope of this article, which is merely to present the different ways that people down through the ages have made ten commandments out of the fifteen commands in Exodus 20:2-17. I was originally going to discuss further the Reformed treatment of the prohibition of graven images right here in this article but have found the topic to encompass too much to include in an already long article on the numbering of the Ten Commandments. It deserves its own article, so, God willing, my next one will be about the reasons I think the Reformed have made a separate commandment out of Exodus 20:4-5 when I think it’s clear it’s part of the first commandment (“Thou shalt have no other gods”) and doesn’t apply outside of that context.