Law and Grace (10) Ten Words

Christians refer to the Ten Commandments, but that is a bit misleading. When God announced to the people, he referred to them as words.

God spoke all these words (Ex 20:1).

God gave his people words, not commandments. They are never referred to as ten commandments in the scriptures, but are described as Ten Words several times.

He declared to you his covenant, ten words which he instructed you to do, and he wrote them on two stone tablets (Deut 4:13).

Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the ten words (Exodus 34:28).

The LORD wrote on these tablets what he had written before, the ten words he had proclaimed to you on the mountain, out of the fire, on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me (Deut 10:4).

In each of these passages, the English translators have inserted the word commandment, but the Hebrew word is dabar, which means “word”.

The translators often insert the expression “ten commandments” into Exodus 25:16, 21 and Exodus 40:3,20, but the Hebrew word is testimony or witness.

He took the tablets of the testimony and placed them in the ark (Ex 40:20).

The Ten Words are a testimony or a witness between God and his people.The ten words are each quite different, so it is better to refer to them as words than as commandments. For example, a couple are technically laws, because they have penalties specified that legal authorities can apply to enforce them. Others are more in the nature of advice. They all fit together into four groups. I will describe these in the next post.