Decalogue is list of laws which were statements from God and they were referred to as “The Ten commandments”. The ten words, or utterances, have been interpreted in different versions; making it difficult to exactly determine what they are or how to count them. The Ten Commandments are found in the Hebrew Bible and they have been recorded in three different biblical chapters which are: Exodus 20:1-17, Exodus 34:28 and Deut 5. Each text was slightly different from the other, and neither passage numbers clearly the commandment one to ten.

Taking for example, Exodus 34, it is argued here that God said that He would make a set of table that would have words that were in the first set. However, in this version of Decalogue, the ten commands that follow do not follow the order of “Thou shall not…” commands. According to the arguments that were raised by scholars of his version, they claimed that Exodus 34 was meant to be parallel to the ethical dialogue. Proponents of this version argued that Exodus 34 as a whole was a narrative of the renewal of the covenant which followed after the incidence of the golden calf. The ritual Decalogue followed after the calf incidence whereby Moses was commanded to write them. Notably, although Moses was told to write them, eventually, it was God who wrote the final set of the ethical Decalogue as was written in Exodus 34:1. The last verse indicated that “he wrote upon the table”. As a result of this verse, there many issues that were raised by different scholars some claiming that it was god who wrote the final new copy of the Ten Commandments. Instead, proponents of this version of Decalogue assert that it was God who wrote the new copy and not Moses (Dozeman, Evans & Lohr, 2014).

There were also differences between Det. 5 and Exodus 20. Det. 5 and Exodus 20 describe the Sabbath day. The minor changes in vocabularies is not has been debated bout this version, but the people who were being addressed and in difference experiences. For example, Exodus 20 states that the Sabbath day set was released in Egypt while Det. 5 states that the second set was born during the Exodus. In addition, Deuteronomy covenant was meant to rule those who never toiled or suffered in Egypt. In the version shown in Deut. 5, the initial generation had already been saved from slavery from Egypt and as a reminded to the Israelites for being helped by God to go to the Promised Land, He reminded them to keep the Sabbath Day Holy. As a result, this version was different from the one depicted in Exodus 20; in this version, God commanded the Israelites to honor the Sabbath Day after they had been freed from slavery in Egypt. There was also another difference in the words that were used in the two versions. For example, Exodus 20 says to remember (Zakar) which refers to the Sabbath Day, and also shows why God blessed the Sabbath Day. However, different words were used in Det. 5. Det. 5 says to keep shamar. The word meant to protect the Sabbath day, and also mentioned zakar to refer to the remembrance of slavery in Egypt. Despite these versions, there has been no just in making an argument on the variations (Dozeman, Evans & Lohr, 2014).

References

Dozeman, T., Evans, C.A., Lohr, J.N. (2014). The book of Exodus: Composition, reception, and

interpretation. Netherlands: BRILL