right (612×502 mm) by Jekuthiel Sofer emulated the 1675 Decalogue at Amsterdam Esnoga synagogue. [1]
The Ten Commandments
, or Decalogue
, are a list of religious and moral imperatives that, according to Judeo-Christian tradition, were authored by God and given to Moses on the mountain referred to as "Mount Sinai" () or "Horeb" () in the form of two stone tablets. They are recognized as a moral foundation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. [2]
In Biblical Hebrew, the commandments are called ???? ?????? (transliterated Aseret ha-Dvarîm) and in Rabbinical Hebrew ???? ?????? (transliterated Aseret ha-Dibrot), both translatable as "the ten terms." The English name "Decalogue" is derived from the Greek translation de??????? dekalogos
"ten terms", found in the Septuagint at and .
The phrase "Ten Commandments" is generally used to refer to similar passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy . Some scholars distinguish between this "Ethical Decalogue" and a different series of ten commandments in that they call the "Ritual Decalogue". Although Exodus 34 contains ten imperative statements, the passages in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 contain fourteen or fifteen. However, the Bible assigns the count of ten to both lists. [3] Various denominations divide these statements into ten in different ways, and may also translate the Commandments differently.
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TEN COMMANDMENTS TICKETS
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Text of the Ten Commandments
The lists known as the Ten Commandments are given in passages in two books of the Bible: , and . These passages are provided in English below, using the
New Revised Standard Version translation and formatting. Various religions and denominations group the commandments differently; see the
Division of the Commandments section for a detailed accounting. The Exodus 34 passage is divergent and covered
elsewhere.
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| 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 Do not have any other gods before me.
4 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.
5 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,
6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 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.
8 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
9 For six days you shall labour and do all your work.
10 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.
11 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.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 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.
| 6 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
7 you shall have no other gods before me.
8 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.
9 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 fourth generation of those who reject me,
10 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
11 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.
12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
13 For six days you shall labour and do all your work.
14 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.
15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
16 Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
17 You shall not murder.
18 Neither shall you commit adultery.
19 Neither shall you steal.
20 Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor.
21 Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
| 11 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.
12 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.
13 You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles
14 (for you shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).
15 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.
16 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.
17 You shall not make cast idols.
18 You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread. For 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.
19 All that first opens the womb is mine, all your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep.
20 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.
21 For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest.
22 You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year.
23 Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel.
24 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.
25 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.
26 The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God.
You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.
27 The Lord said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.
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Division of the commandments as listed in Exodus 20
The passage in Exodus 20 contains more than ten imperative statements, totalling 14 or 15 in all. While the Bible itself assigns the count of "10", using the Hebrew phrase
aseret had'varim
—translated as
the 10 words
,
statements
or
things
, this phrase does not appear in Exodus 20.
Various religions parse the commandments differently. The table below highlights those differences.
| Commandment
| Jewish (Talmudic)****
| Anglican, Reformed, and other Christian
| Orthodox
| Catholic, Lutheran**
|
| I am the Lord your God
| 1
| preface
| 1
| 1
|
| You shall have no other gods before me
| 2
| 1
|
| You shall not make for yourself an idol
| 2
| 2
|
| You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
| 3
| 3
| 3
| 2
|
| Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
| 4
| 4
| 4
| 3
|
| Honor your father and mother
| 5
| 5
| 5
| 4
|
| You shall not murder*
| 6
| 6
| 6
| 5
|
| You shall not commit adultery
| 7
| 7
| 7
| 6
|
| You shall not steal***
| 8
| 8
| 8
| 7
|
| You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
| 9
| 9
| 9
| 8
|
| You shall not covet your neighbor's wife
| 10
| 10
| 10
| 9
|
| You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor
| 10
|
Notes:
| *
| The Roman Catholic Church uses the translation 'kill' (less specific and more inclusive) instead of 'murder'. [4]
|
| **
| Some Lutheran churches use a slightly different division of the Ninth and Tenth Commandments (9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house
; 10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his workers, or his cattle, or anything that is your neighbor’s). [5]
|
| ***
| Sources within Judaism assert that this is a reference to kidnapping, whereas Leviticus 19:11 is the Biblical reference banning the stealing of property. This understanding is based on the Talmudical hermeneutic known as ??? ???? ???????/davar ha-lamed me-inyano, (lit. Something proved by the context), by which this must refer to a capital offense just as the previous two commandments refer to capital offenses. [6]
|
| ****
| The "Talmudic Division" is the breakdown held by modern Judaism, and dates to at least the Third Century. The "Philonic Division", which dates to the first century, is found in the writings of Philo and Josephus. They ended the first commandment after verse 3 and list the second commandment as verses 4-6, similar to most Protestants (non-Lutheran) and the Eastern Orthodox Church. . [7]
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Biblical narrative
thumb with the Ten Commandments by
Rembrandt (
1659)The first
Biblical text to refer the commandments are found in Exodus 20, in which they are spoken to the people. There are biblical passages that also refer to ten commandments being written by God on stone, and it is widely though not universally held that these were the Ten Commandments as detailed (see also: "
Ritual Decalogue" for an alternative view). This tradition holds that the commandments were inscribed on what is called "
tablets of stone"
[8], also referred to as "tablets of testimony"
[9] or "tablets of the Covenant"
[10], that God gave to Moses. Moses then gave them to the people of Israel in the third month after their
Exodus from Egypt. Israel's receipt of the commandments occurred on the third day of preparations at the foot of the mount.
[11]
thumb in the Church of
Saint Monica.
The broken set and the second set
The Biblical narrative continues that after receiving the commandments and returning to Mount Horeb, Moses saw that the Israelites had "defiled themselves", and that his brother,
Aaron, had made a
Golden Calf and an altar in front of it. Moses, in terrible anger, broke the tablets.
[12] God later offered Moses to carve two other tablets, to replace the ones he smashed.
[13] Moses appears as the writer in Exodus,
[14] God himself in Deuteronomy.
[15] This second set, brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses,
[16] was placed in the
Ark of the Covenant,
[17] hence designated as the "Ark of the Testimony."
[18]
The Bible also makes other references to the commandments. References to them and the consequences for not following them are found throughout the book of
Deuteronomy.
Reference by Jesus
In the
New Testament,
Jesus repeated some of the commandments in and condensed them into two general commands in another:
‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
—%20Matthew&verse
Here Jesus is quoting the Old Testament, namely and respectively.
Religious interpretations
Judaism
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Classical Jewish interpretations
The arrangement of the commandments on the two tablets is interpreted in different ways in the classical Jewish tradition. Rabbi
Hanina ben Gamaliel says that each tablet contained five commandments, "but the Sages say ten on one tablet and ten on the other".
[19] Because the commandments establish a covenant, it is likely that they were duplicated on both tablets. This can be compared to diplomatic treaties of
Ancient Egypt, in which a copy was made for each party.
[20]
According to the
Talmud, the compendium of traditional
Rabbinic Jewish law, tradition, and interpretation, the Biblical verse "the tablets were written on both their sides"
[21], implies that the carving went through the full thickness of the tablets. The stones in the center part of some letters were not connected to the rest of the tablet, but they did not fall out. Moreover, the writing was also legible from both sides; it was not a mirror image of the text on the other side. The Talmud regards both phenomena as miraculous.
[22]
Significance of the Decalogue
The
Torah
includes hundreds of commandments (generally enumerated in
Rabbinic Judaism as
613 mitzvot), including the ten from the Decalogue. When compared to the whole canon of Jewish law, the Ten Commandments are not given any greater significance in observance or special status. In fact, when undue emphasis was being placed on them, their daily communal recitation was discontinued.
[23] Jewish tradition does, however, recognize them as the ideological basis for the rest of the commandments; a number of works (starting with Rabbi
Saadia Gaon) have made groupings of the commandments according to their links with the Ten Commandments.
The traditional Rabbinical Jewish belief is that the observance of these commandments and the other
mitzvot
are required solely of the Jewish people, and that the laws incumbent on humanity in general are outlined in the seven
Noahide Laws (several of which overlap with the Ten Commandments). In the era of the
Sanhedrin transgressing any one of six of the Ten Commandments theoretically carried the
death penalty, the exceptions being the First Commandment, honoring your father and mother, saying God's name in vain, and coveting, though this was rarely enforced due to a large number of stringent
evidentiary requirements imposed by the
oral law.
Traditional division and interpretation
According to the Medieval
Sefer ha-Chinuch, the first four statements concern the relationship between God and humans, while the next six statements concern the relationships between people.
Rabbinic literature holds that the
Ten Statements
in fact contain 14 or 15 distinct
instructions; see
listing under
Yitro (parsha).
# "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me..."
#:This commandment is to believe in the existence of God and His influence on events in the world
[24], and that the goal of the redemption from Egypt was to become His servants (
Rashi). It prohibits belief in or worship of any additional deities.
# "Do not make an image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above..."
#:This prohibits the construction or fashioning of "idols" in the likeness of created things (beasts, fish, birds, people) and worshipping them.
# "Do not swear falsely by the name of the LORD..."
#:This commandment is to never take the name of God in a vain, pointless or insincere oath.
[25]
# "Remember [
zachor
] the Sabbath day and keep it holy" (the version in Deuteronomy reads
shamor
, "observe")
#:The seventh day of the week is termed
Shabbat and is holy, just as God ceased creative activity during Creation. The aspect of
zachor
is performed by declaring the greatness of the day (
kiddush
), by having three festive meals, and by engaging in
Torah study and pleasurable activities. The aspect of
shamor
is performed by abstaining from productive activity (
39 melachot
) on the Shabbat.
# "
Honor your father and your mother..."
#:The obligation to honor one's parents is an obligation that one owes to God and fulfills this obligation through one's actions towards one's parents.
# "Do not murder"
#:Murdering a human being is a capital sin.
[26]
# "Do not commit adultery."
#:Adultery is defined as sexual intercourse between a man and a married woman who is not his wife.
# "Do not steal."
#:According to
Rashi, this is not understood as stealing in the conventional sense, since theft of property is forbidden elsewhere and is not a capital offense. In this context it is to be taken as "do not kidnap."
# "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor"
#:One must not bear false witness in a court of law or other proceeding.
# "Do not covet your neighbor's wife"
#:One is forbidden to desire and plan how one may obtain that which God has given to another.
Maimonides makes a distinction in codifying the laws between the instruction given here in Exodus (
You shall not covet
) and that given in Deuteronomy (
You shall not desire
), according to which one does not violate the Exodus commandment unless there is a physical action associated with the desire, even if this is legally purchasing an envied object.
Use in Jewish ritual
The
Mishnah records that it was the practice, in the Temple, to recite the Ten Commandments every day before the reading of the
Shema (as preserved, for example, in the
Nash Papyrus from c. 150 BCE); but that this practice was abolished in the synagogues so as not to give ammunition to heretics who claimed that they were the only important part of Jewish law.
[27]
In the normal course of the reading of the Torah, the Ten Commandments are read twice a year: the Exodus version in
parashat Yitro
around January, and the Deuteronomy version in
parashat Va'etchanan
in August-September. In addition, the Exodus version constitutes the main Torah reading for the festival of
Shavuot. It is widespread custom for the congregation to stand while they are being read.
In printed Bibles the Ten Commandments carry two sets of
cantillation marks. The
ta'am 'elyon
(upper accentuation), which makes each Commandment into a separate verse, is used for public Torah reading, while the
ta'am tachton
(lower accentuation), which divides the text into verses of more even length, is used for private reading or study. It is thought that these differences originally represented the difference between the customs of Eretz Yisrael and those of Babylonia. As it happens, the verse numbering in Christian Bibles follows the
ta'am elyon
while that in Jewish Bibles follows the
ta'am tachton
. In Jewish Bibles the references to the Ten Commandments are therefore and .
Samaritan
The
Samaritan Pentateuch varies in the ten commandments passages, both in that their Deuteronomical version of the passage is much closer to that in Exodus, and in the addition of a commandment on the sanctity of
Mount Gerizim.
The text of the commandment follows:
And it shall come to pass when the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land of the Canaanites whither thou goest to take possession of it, thou shalt erect unto thee large stones, and thou shalt cover them with lime, and thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this Law, and it shall come to pass when ye cross the Jordan, ye shall erect these stones which I command thee upon Mount Gerizim
, and thou shalt build there an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones, and thou shalt not lift upon them iron, of perfect stones shalt thou build thine altar, and thou shalt bring upon it burnt offerings to the Lord thy God, and thou shalt sacrifice peace offerings, and thou shalt eat there and rejoice before the Lord thy God. That mountain is on the other side of the Jordan at the end of the road towards the going down of the sun in the land of the Canaanites who dwell in the Arabah facing Gilgal close by Elon Moreh facing Shechem. [28]
Christianity
thumb believe that
Jesus is the mediator of the
New Covenant (see ). His famous
sermon from a hill representing
Mount Zion is considered by many Christian scholars to be the
antitype [29] of the proclamation of the Ten Commandments (
Old Covenant) by
Moses from
Mount Sinai.
Roman Catholic and Lutheran Christianity
The Lutheran (Protestant) and Roman Catholic division of the commandments both follow the one established by
St. Augustine, following the then current synagogue scribal division. The first three commandments govern the relationship between God and humans, the fourth through eighth govern public relationships between people, and the last two govern private thoughts. For additional information on the Catholic understanding of the Ten Commandments, see the
Catechism of the Catholic Church
(1994), sections . References to the Catechism are provided below for each commandment as well as the interpretation used by Lutherans and Catholics. The following text is from
NRSV
# "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 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 fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments."
#: Catholic teaching distinguishes between
dulia
—paying honor, respect and veneration to saints and also indirectly to God through contemplation of objects such as paintings and statues—and
latria
— adoration directed to God alone. (See .)
# "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."
#: This commandment prohibits not just swearing but also the misappropriation of religious language in order to commit a crime, participating in occult practices, and blaspheming against places or people that are holy to God. (See .)
# "Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 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, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day."
#: The Catechism states that the "first day" of the week, or Sunday, has replaced the Jewish Sabbath—the completion of creation—as the Lord's day because it "recalls the new creation inaugurated by the Resurrection of Christ." The Catholic Church teaches that Catholics are obliged to attend
Mass on Sunday and to avoid any unnecessary work that distracts from keeping the Lord's day. (see .)
# "Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you."
#: This commandment emphasizes the family as part of God's design, as well as an extended metaphor that God uses for his relationship with his creation. (See .)
# "(Roman Catholic -
New American Bible) You shall not kill / (Lutheran -
New International Version) You shall not murder"
#: The right of states to execute criminals is not absolutely forbidden by this commandment. However, other methods of protecting society (
incarceration,
rehabilitation) are increasingly available and more in keeping with other Christian moral teaching. Catholics (along with many Lutherans) also consider abortion sinful and a violation of this commandment.
War, if rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy are met (that is, the "use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated"), is not a violation because "governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed." (See .)
# "Neither shall you commit
adultery."
#: Adultery is the breaking of the holy bond between husband and wife, and is thus a sacrilege. This commandment includes not just the act of adultery, but lust as well. (See .)
# "Neither shall you steal."
#: (See .)
# "Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor."
#: This commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in relations with others. This also forbids lying. (See .)
# "Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife."
#: (See .)
# "Neither shall you desire your neighbor's house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
#: (See .)
The Commandments are seen as general "subject headings" for moral theology, in addition to being specific commandments in themselves. Thus, the commandment to honor father and mother is seen as a heading for a general rule to respect legitimate authority, including the authority of the state. The commandment not to commit adultery is traditionally taken to be a heading for a general rule to be sexually pure, the specific content of the purity depending, of course, on whether one is married or not. In this way, the Ten Commandments can be seen as dividing up all of morality. They are also to be seen as the most fundamental of guidance on how to achieve progress in meditation or prayer—the obvious example being that it would be difficult to consider a rising spirit when the heart was planning murder.
Protestant Christianity
There are many different
denominations of Protestantism, and it is impossible to generalize in a way that covers them all. However, this diversity arose historically from fewer sources, the various teachings of which can be summarized, in general terms.
Lutherans, Reformed (Calvinists) and Anglicans, and Anabaptists all taught, and their descendants still predominantly teach, that the Ten Commandments have both an explicitly negative content, and an implied positive content. Besides those things that ought not to be done, there are things which ought not to be left undone. So that, besides not transgressing the prohibitions, a faithful abiding by the commands of God includes keeping the obligations of love. The ethic contained in the Ten Commandments and indeed in all of Scripture is, "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself", and, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
thumb.
Lutherans theorize that there is an
antithesis between these two sides of the
Word of God, the positive and the negative.
Love and gratitude is a guide to those under the
Gospel, and the prohibitions are for unbelievers and profane people. This antithesis between
Law and Gospel runs through every ethical command, according to Lutheran understanding.
The
Anabaptists have held that the commandments of God are the content of the covenant established through Christ: faith is faithfulness, and thus,
belief is essentially the same thing as
obedience.
Reformed and
Anglicans have taught the abiding validity of the commandments, and call it a summation of the "moral law", binding on all people. However, they emphasize the union of the believer with Christ - so that the will and power to perform the commandments does not arise from the commandment itself, but from the gift of the Holy Spirit. Apart from this grace, the commandment is only productive of condemnation, according to this family of doctrine.
Modern
Evangelicalism, under the influence of
dispensationalism, commonly denies that the commandments have any abiding validity as a requirement binding upon Christians; however, they contain principles which are beneficial to the believer. Dispensationalism is particularly emphatic about the dangers of
legalism, and thus, in a distinctive way de-emphasizes the
teaching of the law (see also
antinomianism). Somewhat analogously,
Pentecostalism and the
Charismatic movement typically emphasizes the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the freedom of the Christian from outward commandments, sometimes in antithesis to the letter of the Law.
Quakers and
Pietists have historically set themselves against the Law as a form of commandment binding on Christians, and have emphasized the inner guidance and liberty of the believer, so that the law is fulfilled not merely by avoiding what the Law prohibits, but by carrying out what the Spirit of God urges upon their conscience.
Typical Protestant view
For those Christians who believe that the Ten Commandments continue to be binding for Christians (see also
Old Testament—Christian view of the Law), their negative and positive content can be summarized as follows.
:
Preface: vs 1–2
Implies
the obligation to keep all of the commandments of God, in gratitude because of the abundance of his mercy.
Forbids
ingratitude to God and denial that he is our God.
# vs 3
Enjoins
that God must be known and acknowledged to be the only true God, and our God; and, to worship him and to make him known as he has been made known to us.
Forbids
not worshiping and glorifying the true God as God, and as our God; and forbids giving worship and glory to any other, which is due to him alone.
# vs 4–6
Requires
receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God has appointed; and zeal in resisting those who would corrupt worship; because of God's ownership of us, and interest in our salvation.
Prohibits
the worshiping of God by
images, or by confusion of any creature with God, or any other way not appointed in his Word. (According to the traditional presbyterian and reformed view, this commandment also prohibits any man-made inventions to worship, which formed a basis for their criticism of Roman Catholic liturgies.)
# vs 7
Enjoins
a holy and a reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works.
Forbids
all abuse of anything by which God makes Himself known. Some Protestants, especially in the tradition of
pacifism, read this Commandment as forbidding any and all oaths, including judicial oaths and oaths of allegiance to a government, noting that human weakness cannot foretell whether such oaths will in fact be vain.
# vs 8–11
Requires
setting apart to God such set times as are appointed in his Word. Many Protestants are increasingly concerned that the values of the marketplace do not dominate entirely, and deprive people of leisure and energy needed for worship, for the creation of civilized culture. The setting of time apart from and free from the demands of commerce is one of the foundations of a decent human society. See
Sabbath.
Forbids
the omission, or careless performance, of the religious duties, using the day for idleness, or for doing that which is in itself sinful; and prohibits requiring of others any such omission, or transgression, on the designated day.
# vs 12
The only commandment with explicitly positive content, rather than a prohibition; it connects all of the temporal blessings of God, with reverence for and obedience to authority, and especially for father and mother.
Forbids
doing anything against, or failing to give, the honor and duty which belongs to anyone, whether because they possess authority or because they are subject to authority.
# vs 13
Requires
all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life, and the life of others.
Forbids
taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbor, unjustly (Just taking of life includes self-defense, executions by the magistrate and times of war.); and, anything that tends toward depriving life. By extension it condemns even verbal abuse and anger, as exmplified by Christ's interpretation in the sermon on the mount.
# vs 14
Enjoins
protection of our own and our neighbor’s chastity, in heart, speech, and behavior.
Forbids
all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions.
# vs 15
Requires
a defense of all lawful things that further the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.
Prohibits
whatever deprives our neighbor, or ourselves, of lawfully gained wealth or outward estate.
# vs 16
Requires
the maintaining and promoting of truth between people, and of our neighbor’s good name and our own, especially in witness-bearing.
Forbids
whatsoever is prejudicial to truth, or injurious to our own, or our neighbor’s, good name.
# vs 17
Enjoins
contentment with our own condition, and a charitable attitude toward our neighbor and all that is his, being thankful for his sake that he has whatever is beneficial to him, as we are for those things that benefit us.
Forbids
discontent or envy, prohibits any grief over the betterment of our neighbor's estate, and all inordinate desires to obtain for ourselves, or scheming to wrest for our benefit, anything that is his.
Islam