Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, is a list of religious and moral imperatives which, according to the Bible, was spoken by YHWH to Moses on Mount Sinai and engraved on two stone tablets. They feature prominently in Judaism and Christianity. In Biblical Hebrew they are termed Aseret ha-Dvarîm עשרת הדברים, and in Rabbinical Hebrew Aseret ha-Dibrot עשרת הדברות both translatable as "The Ten Utterances". The name decalogue is derived from the Greek name δέκα λόγοι or dekalogoi ("Ten Speeches") found in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name.

Second set

God subsequently commanded Moses to carve two other tablets like the first (Exodus 34:1). In Exodus 34:27,28 Moses was commanded to rewrite, and did rewrite, the commandments himself. In Deuteronomy 4:13, 5:18, 9:10, and 10:24, however, God himself appears as the writer. This second set, brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses (Exodus 34:29), was placed in the Ark, also known as the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:16, 21; 40:20), hence designated as the "Ark of the Testimony" (Exodus 25:22; Numbers 4:5; compare also I Kings 8:9). Various theories have been advanced as to why the text in Deuteronomy differs on some points with the text in Exodus (see below).

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