The Real 10 Commandments

How many of you memorized the 10 Commandments when you were in Sunday School?  No doubt your list came from Exodus, Chapter 20.

But when the Old Testament, itself, refers to the 10 Commandments, it does not cite this list.

Here’s the problem. 

Moses makes his 1^st trip up the mountain, and he comes back with no stone tablets at all.  He simply speaks what he says God told him.  (Thus we have the traditional “10 Commandments” found in Exodus 20.)

Then Moses goes back up the mountain for a 2^nd meeting with God.  When he comes down, he has the stone tablet with the laws engraved by the finger of God.  However, when Moses sees the Israelites worshipping a golden cow, Moses has a cow and smashes the tablets to pieces!  (Not a very wise way to treat a rare, sacred artifact!)

So, Moses makes a 3^rd trip back up the mountain to get a replacement set.  This set is the only place in scripture where the laws are referred to as the 10 Commandments.  (Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13.)

What are these 10 laws, written in stone by God himself? 

• Do not worship any other God.  (Ex 34:14) 
• Do not make cast idols.  (Ex. 34:17)
• Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  (Ex. 34:18)
• Six days you should labor, but on the seventh day, you shall rest.  (Ex. 34:21)
• Celebrate the Feast of Weeks.  (Ex. 34:22)
• Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord, the God of Israel.  (Ex. 34:23)
• Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast.  (Ex. 34:25)
• Do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.  (Ex. 34:25)
• Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.  (Ex. 34:26)
• Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.  (Ex. 34:26)

There you have it.  The 10 most important laws written by God himself and delivered from the mountain meeting by Moses.  The real 10 Commandments.

What happened to murder, theft, perjury, honoring your parents and adultery?   

I guess not cooking a kid in its mother’s milk was more important.