The 20 Commandments

by Andrew Rutajit

Christians think the Charlton Heston version of the Ten Commandments is historic. This makes me laugh and cry at the same time. At what point will Christians actually read the bibles that they believe in so wholeheartedly? The common listing of the Ten Commandments is from Exodus 20. We call them the Ten Commandments, even though they are never identified as the “Ten Commandments” in the bible and they were never given to Moses and never carved onto two stone tablets.

So what really happened (according to the bible)?

In Exodus 24, Moses and the elders are all together when Moses is called forward to have a little talk with God. In proper preparation to meet with the Lord, Moses did what any of us would do…he builds an altar and sprinkles bull blood all over it and pours more bull blood into some cups. Then he takes even more bull blood and sprinkles it on his friends…apparently, they all took a bull blood bath to prepare for a meeting with God. Because everyone knows, both God and Jesus love the blood! They want you to drink it at communion, cover your doors with it on Passover,  cover the altar with it, cover yourself with it (to be “blessed” by blood, so to speak). You Christians in your nice and clean Sunday clothes are doing it all wrong! If you were really committed to your faith, you would cover yourself with bull blood every Sunday morning before church. But I digress.

So then (after dinner) God and Moses  conveniently meet at the top of a mountain. Over the course of the next several chapters, the Lord tells Moses how to build  the arc and a tabernacle for the Lord, what to wear around the Lord, what animals to slaughter for the Lord and what is to be done with the animal’s blood (of course), how much money to pay the Lord, what kind of curtains to put on a sacred tent built for the Lord, what incense to burn for the Lord, and on and on about how to worship the Lord. No wonder he was so pissed off when he found his people worshiping a golden calf in Moses’ absence. God must have thought, “I have people covering themselves in bull blood to worship me, and here these people are worshiping a goddamn calf?!!” After 40 days of instruction from God on proper worship attire, incense, curtains, sacrifice instructions, etc., the first set of commandments were carved. Immediately after these commandments were spoken by God, we read:

Exodus 31:18 (New International Version)

18 When the LORD finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.

At this point, there has been no mention of the commandments being limited to ten. As a matter of fact, it took forty days just to communicate these commandments to Moses. The bible leads us to believe that all of theses instructions on how to worship properly are inscribed (front and back) on each stone carried by Moses. These are the tablets that are broken in frustration at his people worshiping another god.

Now stop for a minute…how were the Israelites to know that they were not to worship other gods at this point?

Ahhh…well here is the rub. 13 chapters ago, in Exodus 19 and 20, all of these people were told by God himself to have no other gods, do not murder, do not steal, etc…they were told by God what we today call the “Ten Commandments.” These commandments were never given to Moses on tablets of any kind, they were (according to the bible) spoken from a cloud in the sky and everyone who was listening could hear…all of the people following Moses heard it.  But even these commandments were not called, “Ten Commandments.” The two stone tablets carried by Moses were not the Ten Commandments either, those tablets contained details on how to properly kiss Gods ass. So where do we get the term “Ten Commandments”? Yes, it is from the Bible and yes there are ten commandments listed with this term.

So the stone tablets were broken by Moses and he then had to climb back up Mount Sinai to get a second set of stone tablets with the same commandments carved into them. The words “Ten Commandments” are actually found in Exodus 34:28 and then again in Deuteronomy 4:13.  The verse in Deuteronomy solidifies the claim that the “Ten Commandments” are written “on two stone tablets,” Not spoken from a cloud in the sky.

Deuteronomy 4:13

And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.

Exodus 34:

(1) The LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. (2) Be ready in the morning, and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. (3) No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain.”(4) So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands… (27) Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” (28) Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.

Ok, drum-roll please…if it were an open book test and there was only one question, “List the Ten Commandments” the only answer acceptable would be the list Moses received the second time he went up the mountain. In the bible, this is the only list that is referred to as the Ten Commandments (you can find it in Exodus 34):

1. Thou shalt worship no other god.
2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep.
4. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
5. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks.
6. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God.
7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.
8. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the Passover be left until the morning.
9. The first of the fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of the Lord thy God.
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mothers milk.

Do theses commandments sound familiar?

Maybe some do…the first, second, and fourth commandments are the same as the original ten, except for the few words that are off; but the others are all totally different from the traditional “Ten Commandments”. What happened to killing, theft and perjury? Notice that these are not additional commandments; they are “the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.” If you were ever tempted to boil a goat in the milk of its mother, now you know better. People make such a big deal about the Ten Commandments but if someone really wanted to cause some chaos, they would post the actual Ten Commandments in a public place. It would be fun to watch the confusion set in as Christians standing up for their rights to post these commandments wherever they chose suddenly realize that they have no idea what they are talking about.