Original Form of the Ten Commandments

commandments, ten, original, formA comparison of the text of the Decalogue in Dt 5 with that in Ex 20 reveals a goodly number of differences, especially in the reasons assigned for the observance of the 4th and 5th commandments, and in the text of the 10th commandment. A natural explanation of these differences is the fact that Dt employs the free-and-easy style of public discourse. The Ten Commandments are substantially the same in the two passages.

From the days of Ewald to the present, some of the leading Old Testament scholars have held that originally all the commandments were brief and without the addition of any special reasons for their observance. According to this hypothesis, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and the 10th commandments were probably as follows: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”; “Thou shalt not take the name of Yahweh thy God in vain”; “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”; “Honor thy father and thy mother”; “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house.” This early critical theory would account for the differences in the two recensions by supposing that the motives for keeping the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th commandments, as well as the expansion of the 10th, were additions made through the influence of the prophetic teaching. If accompanied by a full recognition of the divine origin of the ten words in the Mosaic era, this hypothesis might be acceptable to a thorough believer in revelation. Before acquiescing in the more radical theories of some recent scholars, such a believer will demand more cogent arguments than the critics have been able to bring forward. Thus when we are told that the Decalogue contains prohibitions that could not have been incorporated into a code before the days of Manasseh, we demand better proofs than the failure of Israel to live up to the high demands of the 2nd and the 10th commandments, or a certain theory of the evolution of the history that may commend itself to the mind of naturalistic critics. Yahweh was at work in the early history of Israel; and the great prophets of the 8th century, far from creating ethical monotheism, were reformers sent to demand that Israel should embody in daily life the teachings of the Torah.

Goethe advanced the view that Ex 34:10-28 originally contained a second decalogue.

Wellhausen (Code of Hammurabi, 331 f) reconstructs this so-called decalogue as follows:

(1) Thou shalt worship no other god (Exo 34:14).
(2) Thou shalt make thee no molten gods (Exo 34:17).
(3) The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep (Exo 34:18).
(4) Every firstling is mine (Exo 34:19).
(5) Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks (Exo 34:22).
(6) And the feast of ingathering at the year's end (Exo 34:22).
(7) Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread (Exo 34:25).
(8) The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning (Exo 23:18; compare Exo 34:25).
(9) The best of the first-fruits of thy ground shalt thou bring to the house of Yahweh thy God (Exo 34:26).
(10) Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk (Exo 34:26).
Addis agrees with Wellhausen that even this simpler decalogue must be put long after the time of Moses (EB, 1051).

Now, it is evident that the narrative in Exo 34:27 f, in its present form, means to affirm that Moses was commanded to write the precepts contained in the section immediately preceding. The Ten Commandments, as the foundation of the covenant, were written by Yahweh Himself on the two tablets of stone (Exo 31:18; Exo 32:15 f; Exo 34:28). It is only by free critical handling of the narrative that it can be made to appear that Moses wrote on the two tables the supposed decalogue of Exo 34:14-26. Moreover, the law of the Sabbath (Exo 34:21), which is certainly appropriate amid the ritual ordinances of Ex 34, must be omitted altogether, in order to reduce the precepts to ten; also the command in Exo 34:23 has to be deleted. It is interesting to observe that the prohibition of molten gods (Exo 34:17), even according to radical critics, is found in the earliest body of Israelite laws. There is no sufficient reason for denying that the 2nd commandment was promulgated in the days of Moses. Yahweh's requirements have always been in advance of the practice of His people.


This biblical study was taken from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co