What Are the Ten Commandments? The Full List and What Each One Means

The Hebrew Bible never calls them "the Ten Commandments." The phrase it uses is aseret ha-devarim — "the ten words" or "ten utterances" (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 10:4). That is where the word Decalogue comes from: deka (ten) plus logos (word). It is a small difference that changes how you read the list. These are not ten rules lifted from a longer legal code. They are the ten foundational sentences God speaks aloud to an entire assembled nation at Sinai, before any other law is given.

Two Tablets, Ten Words

Exodus 19 sets the scene: thunder, smoke, a mountain wrapped in fire, and a people held back behind a boundary line. Then Exodus 20:1 says simply, "God spoke all these words." What follows is the only section of the Torah delivered directly to everyone at once. Exodus 20:18-19 records the reaction — the people were terrified and begged Moses to receive the rest on their behalf.

The words were written "on two tablets of stone" (Exodus 31:18), inscribed "on the front and on the back" (Exodus 32:15). Popular art shows five commandments per tablet, but that split is a later guess. In the ancient Near East, a treaty between a greater king and a lesser one was written in duplicate, one copy for each party to keep in its own sanctuary. Many scholars think the two tablets were two complete copies of the same covenant, both placed in the ark, because at Sinai both parties — God and Israel — lived in the same tent.

The Ten Commandments in Full

Here is the list as it appears in Exodus 20:2-17:

1. "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me" (20:2-3). The list opens with a rescue, not a demand. Everything after it is framed as a response to freedom already given.
2. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image" (20:4-6) — no idols, and no attempt to reduce God to something you can picture and manage.
3. "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain" (20:7) — broader than profanity; it forbids using God's name to back a lie or an empty oath.
4. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (20:8-11) — one day in seven, with rest extended to servants, animals, and foreigners.
5. "Honor your father and your mother" (20:12) — the first commandment with a promise attached.
6. "You shall not murder" (20:13) — the Hebrew ratsach means unlawful killing, not every kind of killing.
7. "You shall not commit adultery" (20:14).
8. "You shall not steal" (20:15).
9. "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor" (20:16) — courtroom language first, protecting people from perjury.
10. "You shall not covet" (20:17) — the only commandment aimed entirely at the inner life, at wanting rather than doing.

Why the Numbering Differs

Every tradition counts ten; they disagree about where the divisions fall.

• Jewish tradition treats verse 2 — "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt" — as the whole first "word," then combines the ban on other gods and on idols as the second.
• Catholic and Lutheran tradition, following Augustine, folds "no other gods" and "no idols" together as the first commandment, then splits the last one in two: coveting a neighbor's spouse (ninth) and coveting a neighbor's goods (tenth).
• Reformed, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions keep "no other gods" and "no carved images" as separate first and second commandments and keep coveting as a single tenth.

The content is identical in every version. The differences are about emphasis — whether idolatry deserves its own line, and whether inward desire is one temptation or two.

Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5: One List, Two Tellings

The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Torah, and the wording is not quite the same. The clearest gap is the Sabbath. Exodus 20:11 roots the day of rest in creation: "For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth . . . and rested on the seventh day." Deuteronomy 5:15 roots it in the exodus instead: "You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out."

Deuteronomy is Moses retelling Sinai to the next generation, forty years later, on the edge of the promised land. The shift fits the audience: people who did not stand at the mountain are urged to keep the Sabbath as a memorial of the freedom their parents were given. Deuteronomy 5:12 also says "observe" the Sabbath where Exodus 20:8 says "remember" — a small change that later Jewish tradition treats as two words spoken in a single divine breath.

How Jesus Summed Up the Whole Law

Centuries later a lawyer asked Jesus which commandment was greatest (Matthew 22:36). Jesus answered with two lines, neither of them from the Ten: love God with all your heart, soul, and mind (Deuteronomy 6:5), and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18). "On these two commandments," he said, "depend all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:40).

It is a compression, not a replacement. The first commandments describe what loving God looks like — no rivals, no idols, honoring his name, keeping his day. The rest describe what loving a neighbor looks like — protecting their life, marriage, property, and reputation, and not even wishing to take what is theirs. When Jesus told the story of a despised outsider stopping to bandage a stranger, he was dramatizing the second half of the list from the inside; you can read it in the meaning of the Good Samaritan. Paul makes the same move in Romans 13:9, listing the commandments and then saying they are "summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The Ten Words still work the way they did at Sinai — not a ladder to climb toward God, but the shape of life for people God has already rescued. The book of Judges shows what the absence of that shared center looks like, in figures like Samson, and the book of Daniel shows what it costs to keep the first commandment when a new law makes prayer a crime.

The Ten Commandments are read aloud in synagogues and churches every year, but they land differently when you hear them inside the story — the fear at the mountain, the golden calf just weeks later, the long road that follows. You can listen to the story on HearBibleStories and hear the Ten Words in the setting that gave them their weight.

Hear the Bible come to life

Listen to hundreds of Bible stories with HD narration on the HearBibleStories app.

Or browse the full story catalogue on the web.