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Exodus

About this book

The Ten Commandments and the Covenant

Chapter 20

1 God spoke all these words: 2 “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt,⁠ from the house of slavery.⁠ 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below.⁠ 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, responding to the transgression of fathers by dealing with children to the third and fourth generations of those who reject me,⁠ 6 and showing covenant faithfulness to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.⁠ 7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain. 8 “Remember the Sabbath day to set it apart as holy. 9 For six days you may labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your cattle, or the resident foreigner who is in your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.⁠ 12 “Honor your father and your mother,⁠ that you may live a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving to you.⁠ 13 “You shall not murder.⁠ 14 “You shall not commit adultery.⁠ 15 “You shall not steal.⁠ 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.⁠ 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,⁠ nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”⁠ 18 All the people were seeing the thundering and the lightning, and heard the sound of the horn, and saw the mountain smoking—and⁠ when the people saw it they trembled with fear and kept their distance.⁠ 19 They said to Moses, “You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak with us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you so that you do not sin.” 21 The people kept their distance, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was. 22 The Lord said to Moses, “Thus you will tell the Israelites: ‘You yourselves have seen that I have spoken with you from heaven.⁠ 23 You must not make gods of silver alongside me,⁠ nor make gods of gold for yourselves. 24 “‘You must make for me an altar made of earth, and you will sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. In every place where I cause my name to be honored I will come to you and I will bless you.⁠ 25 If you make me an altar of stone, you must not build it of stones shaped with tools, for if you use your tool on it you have defiled it.⁠ 26 And you must not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness is not exposed.’⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 20:13 and Didache 2:2

Hebrew Bible · Early Christian

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Summary

The Didache, an early church manual, contains an expanded form of the commandments of Exodus. In its list, murder comes before adultery, as in the Hebrew text rather than the Greek Septuagint translation.

Passages

Exodus 20:13

Hebrew Bible
13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You shall not steal. 16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. 17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Didache 2:2

Early Christian
1 But the second commandment of the teaching is: 2 You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not corrupt boys; you shall not commit fornication; you shall not steal; you shall not practice magic; you shall not use love potions; you shall not cause abortion, nor kill newborns; you shall not desire your neighbor's possessions. 3 You shall not commit perjury; you shall not lie; you shall not speak ill; you shall not bear grudges. 4 You shall not be double-minded or double-tongued, because that leads to death. 5 Your words shall not be false or meaningless but followed by actions.
90–120 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Didache

References

“... In 2. 2 the Didachist begins an exposition of the Way of Life with an expansion of the second half of the Decalogue. The ordering and wording of the elements from the Decalogue which are included in the Didache here bear some relationship to the list which appears in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ enumeration of these commands to the rich young man in Matt. 19, though it is not clear whether Matthew’s version is sufficiently different from the other synoptic versions for this to be significant in the present discussion. All three synoptics have the same order of the four commands mentioned, and this differs from that of the LXX versions of the Decalogue in both Exod. 20 and Deut. 5 by having ‘murder’ before ‘adultery’. However, the MT versions of both Exod. 20 and Deut. 5 agree with the synoptic versions in having the ban on ‘murder’ first. Hence it is not certain whether the Didache is here to be seen as dependent on the NT versions or simply on the MT version of the OT itself (or perhaps on a Greek version of the OT which was closer to the ordering of the MT than our LXX versions). ...”
Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett, eds., The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 100.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Exodus 20:13 and Didache 2:2

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