The Ten Commandments; Final Draft

So, most people are familiar with the Ten Commandments, or at least with this rendering of the Ten Commandments:

1. You must not have any other god but me.
2. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea.
3. You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.
4. Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
5. Honor your father and mother.
6. You must not murder.
7. You must not commit adultery.
8. You must not steal.
9. You must not testify falsely against your neighbor.
10. You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. 

This set of commands comes from Exodus 20. Free from Egypt, the Israelites have parked themselves at the base of Mount Sinai so Moses could go up on the mountain and meet with Yahweh to get laws and things. While Moses and Yahweh were conferring, the people of Israel somehow forgot that Yahweh just finished besetting the Egyptians with 10 plagues and magically parting the Red Sea so they could escape the Egyptians that Yahweh caused to pursue them (so he could show off his power by killing more of them Exodus 14:4-30).
They get tired of waiting on Yahweh and Moses, so they decide to worship a golden calf. Moses comes down the mountain and smashes the stone tablets on which Yahweh himself supposedly etched the Ten commandments (Exodus 31:18) in a rage because the people have turned they backs on Yahweh by worshiping a cow statue. It's what happens next that I find most interesting.

The tablets were broken and Yahweh was out of glue, so Moses was asked to prepare a new set of tablets for the commands. Yahweh tells him "Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed."

This is the list of commands Yahweh then gave to Moses (Exodus 34):

1. Be very careful never to make a treaty with the people who live in the land where you are going. If you do, you will follow their evil ways and be trapped.
2. You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.
3. You must not make a treaty of any kind with the people living in the land.
4. You must not make any gods of molten metal for yourselves.
5. You must celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
6. The firstborn of every animal belongs to me, including the firstborn males from your herds of cattle and your flocks of sheep and goats.
7. No one may appear before me without an offering.
8. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working, even during the seasons of plowing and harvest.
9. You must celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the first crop of the wheat harvest, and celebrate the Festival of the Final Harvest at the end of the harvest season.
10.  You must not offer the blood of my sacrificial offerings together with any baked goods containing yeast. And none of the meat of the Passover sacrifice may be kept over until the next morning.
11. As you harvest your crops, bring the very best of the first harvest to the house of the Lord your God.
12. You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.

"Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down all these instructions, for they represent the terms of the covenant I am making with you and with Israel.” Moses remained there on the mountain with the Lord forty days and forty nights. In all that time he ate no bread and drank no water. And the Lord wrote the terms of the covenant—the Ten Commandments—on the stone tablets." Exodus 34:27-8

So, these are clearly not the "same words" that Yahweh gave Moses in the first draft of the Commandments. It is also worth noting that this is the only place in the Bible that mentions any list of laws or rules as "the Ten Commandments". Interesting too that although they are not numbered by Yahweh, and he might lump some of them together, there certainly appear to be more than 10. Counting is hard.


There are a lot of things I think are wrong with the Bible in a more profound way. Yahweh is said to have done some really horrible things, and there are lots of outlandish and unsubstantiated claims. This is just an example of bizarre ineptitude that gets swept under the rug by preachers and teachers. But this is not a minor point. How can you explain that an omniscient deity says "I'm going to give you the same list of rules" but who then proceeds to give a list of rules that has only about 2 rules that are even similar? Oops? If this is something like a top-ten list of rules Yahweh wanted us to follow, perhaps he should have taken more time to make sure he got it right.


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Gavagai