The full list, where to find it, why churches count it three different ways, and what a Christian does with words carved in stone for a covenant that has ended.
The 10 commandments in the Bible appear twice, in Exodus 20:1 to 17 and Deuteronomy 5:6 to 21. They forbid other gods, idols, misusing God's name, murder, adultery, theft, false testimony and coveting, and they command the Sabbath and honoring parents.
They were the terms of the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai. Jesus fulfilled that covenant, and love is now how the law gets kept.
Below is the list itself, the line most people skip, why your Catholic neighbor numbers them differently, and what they mean for someone who follows Jesus.
Here they are as most Protestant and Orthodox Christians count them. Other traditions divide the same words differently, which we cover below.
You shall have no other gods before me.
No carved image to bow down to. God will not be shrunk into something you can manage.
Do not take the name of the Lord in vain. Do not carry His name emptily or sign it onto a lie.
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Rest for everyone, servants and animals included.
Honor your father and your mother. The first command that comes with a promise attached.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. First of all a courtroom command.
You shall not covet. The only one aimed at desire itself, before it becomes action.
The first group is about God and the second about people, and Jesus summed up the law the same way. We cover that in the great commandment. Two of the ten have their own pages here already: the second commandment on images, and what it means to take the Lord's name in vain, which is much bigger than bad language.
Most lists of the Ten Commandments start with "no other gods." The text does not. God speaks a sentence first, and it changes how you read everything after it.
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”
Exodus 20:2Before a single command, God tells Israel what He has already done. They did not earn the Red Sea. They were slaves making bricks, and God walked them out. Only then does He tell free people how to live.
The commandments were never a ladder for climbing up to God. Rules first and rescue later is how religion usually works. Rescue first is how this God works, at Sinai and at the cross.
Literally "the ten words." The phrase ten commandments comes from English translations.
Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 4:13 and Deuteronomy 10:4, each time naming what was written on the two tablets.
The word Decalogue comes from Greek and carries the same meaning, ten words.
Jewish tradition counts the opening sentence itself as the first word, even though it commands nothing. The rescue is part of the ten.
The Ten Commandments open with a rescue, not a rule. God's love came first at Sinai, and it still comes first.
Exodus 20 contains more than ten command sentences and never numbers them, so traditions divided the same words in different places. Nobody added or removed anything.
The first word is "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out." The second joins no other gods and no images. The rest follow in order, with coveting as the tenth.
No other gods and no images are read together as the first commandment. The name is second and the Sabbath third. Coveting is split in two: your neighbor's wife is ninth and his goods are tenth.
No other gods is first and no images is second, which makes the name third and the Sabbath fourth. Coveting stays as one command. This is the list most American Protestants learned.
The Catholic Church says this openly. The Catechism states that “the division and numbering of the Commandments have varied in the course of history”, that its own division follows Augustine and is shared by the Lutheran confessions, and that the Greek Fathers worked out the division used in the Orthodox and Reformed churches.
So set aside the claim that Catholics deleted the second commandment. The words about images are in every Catholic Bible, grouped under the first. You can disagree with the grouping. It is not a cover-up.
In Jewish tradition, what is the first of the ten words?
Jewish counting treats God's self introduction in Exodus 20:2 as the first word, then combines no other gods and no images as the second. The rescue is counted as part of the ten.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Deuteronomy is Moses retelling the covenant to the next generation, forty years after Sinai. The wording is nearly identical, and the small differences show Moses preaching, not copying.
Exodus 20:11 grounds the Sabbath in creation, when God rested on the seventh day. Deuteronomy 5:15 grounds it in the exodus: you were slaves once, so let everyone in your house rest.
Exodus says remember the Sabbath day. Deuteronomy says observe it. Same command, a different verb.
Exodus lists your neighbor's house before his wife. Deuteronomy moves the wife first and adds his land to the list.
Deuteronomy 5:16 adds "that it may go well with you" to the promise of long life in the land.
“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”
Deuteronomy 5:15People who had worked without rest under Pharaoh were never to do that to anyone else. For more on the man who carried the tablets down, see who Moses was.
Deuteronomy 4:13 says God "declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments." The ten were the heart of one covenant, made with one nation, at one mountain. That is the key to the whole question.
The Ten Commandments are God's permanent law for every person. Christians are still bound by them as a code, and keeping them is how you stay right with God.
Jesus came to fulfill the law, not abolish it (Matthew 5:17). Hebrews 8:13 calls the first covenant obsolete and says it will soon disappear. Love now fulfills the law.
This is the Sound of Heaven position. The Ten Commandments were the terms of the Sinai covenant. Jesus fulfilled that covenant completely, and it passed away with the end of that age, when the temple fell in AD 70. Christians are not under the law of Moses, the ten included. We are under the law of Christ, which is love for God and neighbor, and the Spirit writes it on our hearts, just as Jeremiah 31:33 promised.
The strongest case for the other view says the ten are the moral law, separate from ceremonial and civil law, and so they carry over unchanged. We understand the instinct. But the Bible never splits the law of Moses that way, and Paul calls the ministry "engraved in letters on stone" a glory that was fading (2 Corinthians 3:7). Stone tablets are exactly what he says was passing.
This cuts both ways. If you hear "not under the law" as permission, you have missed it, because love asks more than Sinai did. Jesus traced murder back to contempt and adultery back to lust. If you keep the ten as a checklist to measure others, you have missed it too. We walk through the wider question in which Old Testament laws still apply and what the law of Christ is.
“Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Romans 13:10The verse before it names adultery, murder, theft and coveting, and says they are all summed up in love your neighbor as yourself. For how Jesus did that, read how Jesus fulfilled the law, and for the covenant timeline, how many covenants are in the Bible.
If the covenant ended, why do the ten sound so familiar in the New Testament? Because nine are repeated there, not as the terms of Sinai but as what love looks like.
1 Corinthians 8:6. For us there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.
1 John 5:21 and 1 Corinthians 10:14. Keep yourselves from idols, and flee idolatry.
Matthew 5:33 to 37 and James 5:12. Let your yes be yes, without calling on God to back your word.
Ephesians 6:2 quotes the command and notes that it is the first one with a promise.
Matthew 5:21 to 28, where Jesus takes both back to the heart, and Romans 13:9.
Ephesians 4:28. The thief stops stealing and starts working so he has something to give.
Colossians 3:9 and Ephesians 4:25. Put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor.
Romans 7:7 and Romans 13:9. Paul says this was the command that showed him his own heart.
The one never restated as a command is the Sabbath. Paul says not to let anyone judge you over a Sabbath day (Colossians 2:16), and Romans 14:5 leaves days to each believer's conscience. So we do not teach Saturday as a Christian obligation, and we do not teach that Sunday replaced it as a new law. But rest is still a gift, because Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man. We lay that out fully in what day the Sabbath is.
Some people read the ten and hear only a verdict against them. If that is you, go back to the first line. God freed Israel before He asked anything, and in Jesus He has done the same for you.
The law could show people where they fell short. It could never change a heart. The Spirit does that, with kindness. You are not on probation.
The Ten Commandments were a gift to a freed people, and they also showed, again and again, that stone cannot change a human heart.
Jesus did what stone could not. He kept the covenant perfectly, fulfilled it, and brought in a new one where the law is written on the heart. Now the question for a Christian is not "which rule applies here?" It is "what does love for God and this neighbor ask of me today?" That question has no loopholes, and the Spirit carries it with you.
So read the ten. They still teach what God cares about: that He alone is God, that people and their marriages, property and good name are worth protecting, and that rest is for everyone. Then look at Jesus, who is what all of it pointed toward. If you want to talk it through with people who will not hand you a checklist, come visit us in Deer Park.
For related reading, see putting God first, idolatry, the law of Moses, the new covenant and what we believe.
Ten words from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, spoken to a people God had already freed, counted three ways by three traditions, fulfilled by Jesus with the old covenant, and still alive in the love the Spirit writes on the heart.
If you grew up with the ten on the wall and are not sure where they fit now, send us a note and someone at Sound of Heaven will pray and talk it through with you.
They are the ten foundational commands God gave Israel at Mount Sinai, recorded in Exodus 20:1 to 17 and again in Deuteronomy 5:6 to 21. In the common Protestant count: no other gods, no idols, do not misuse God's name, keep the Sabbath, honor your parents, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, and do not covet. The Hebrew Bible calls them the ten words, and they open with God reminding Israel that He had already brought them out of slavery.
Exodus 20:1 to 17 records them as God spoke them at Sinai, and Deuteronomy 5:6 to 21 records Moses repeating them to the next generation forty years later. The two versions are nearly the same. The biggest difference is the reason given for the Sabbath: Exodus points back to creation, and Deuteronomy points back to Israel's slavery in Egypt. Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 call them the ten words written on two stone tablets.
Because the text has more than ten command sentences and never numbers them. Catholics and Lutherans follow Augustine, who read no other gods and no images as one commandment and split coveting into two. Orthodox and Reformed churches follow the Greek Fathers, who kept images as a separate second commandment and coveting as one. Jewish tradition counts God's opening words, I am the Lord your God who brought you out, as the first. The words are the same in every Bible.
Not as a legal code. The ten were the covenant terms God made with Israel at Sinai, and Jesus fulfilled that covenant, which passed away with the end of that age. Christians live under the law of Christ, which is love for God and neighbor. That does not lower the bar. Romans 13 says love fulfills the law, and nine of the ten are restated in the New Testament as what love looks like. The Spirit writes that love on the heart.
The Sabbath command is the one never restated as an obligation for Christians. Paul tells believers not to let anyone judge them over a Sabbath day in Colossians 2:16, and Romans 14:5 leaves the observance of days to each person's conscience. The other nine reappear in the teaching of Jesus and the apostles. Rest is still a gift, though, because Jesus said the Sabbath was made for people.