An Introduction To

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

The Foundation of all Good Government

I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out of darkness, out of the house of bondage

(Exodus 20:2, Acts 26:18)

The law that God delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai consisted of nine commandments containing twelve specific commands. In order to make the number of commandments an even ten, the Jews called the introductory statement, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt.”, the first commandment (Exodus 20:2). Since that statement is not actually a commandment, Christians later dropped it from the list. However, because the number ten was, by that time, entrenched in tradition, the eastern Church divided the first commandment into two parts, while the western Catholic Church divided the last commandment into two parts.

Because the introductory statement, “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt” points to Christ as the one who delivers us from the bondage of sin, I have included a version of it at the top of this page. Readers who prefer the numbering adopted by the Jews can call this statement, the first commandment. Those who prefer the numbering followed in most of Western Europe can call the next commandment the first commandment. The commandments remain the same no matter how you number them.

The following commentary is based upon, and closely follows, Martin Luther’s explanation of the Ten Commandments. Martin Luther followed the Jewish custom of treating the three commands found in Exodus 20:3-5 as one commandment. Because Luther understood each commandment in the light of everything the Bible says about that particular sin, the explanations interpret the commandments in the light of God’s Word.

Gary Ray Branscome