I hope this helps:-
Called also simply THE COMMANDMENTS, COMMANDMENTS OF GOD, or
THE DECALOGUE (Gr.
deka, ten, and
logos, a word), the Ten Words of Sayings, the latter name generally applied by the Greek Fathers.
The Ten Commandments are precepts bearing on the fundamental
obligations of
religion and
morality and embodying the
revealed expression of the
Creator's will in relation to
man's whole
duty to
God and to his fellow-creatures. They are found twice recorded in the
Pentateuch, in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, but are given in an abridged form in the catechisms. Written by the finger of
God on two tables of stone, this
Divine code was received from the
Almighty by
Moses amid the thunders of
Mount Sinai, and by him made the ground-work of the
Mosaic Law.
Christ resumed these Commandments in the double precept of
charity--
love of
God and of the neighbour; He proclaimed them as binding under the New Law in Matthew 19 and in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). He also simplified or interpreted them, e.g. by declaring unnecessary
oaths equally unlawful with false, by condemning
hatred and calumny as well as murder, by enjoining even love of enemies, and by condemning indulgence of evil desires as fraught with the same malice as adultery (Matthew 5). The
Church, on the other hand, after changing the day of rest from the Jewish Sabbath, or seventh day of the week, to the first, made the Third Commandment refer to Sunday as the day to be kept holy as the Lord's Day. The
Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. xix) condemns those who deny that the Ten Commandments are binding on
Christians.
There is no numerical division of the Commandments in the Books of Moses, but the injunctions are distinctly tenfold, and are found almost identical in both sources. The order, too, is the same except for the final prohibitions pronounced against concupiscence, that of Deuteronomy being adopted in preference to Exodus. A confusion, however, exists in the numbering, which is due to a difference of opinion concerning the initial precept on
Divine worship. The system of numeration found in
Catholic Bibles, based on the
Hebrew text, was made by
St. Augustine (fifth century) in his book of "Questions of Exodus" ("Quæstionum in Heptateuchum libri VII", Bk. II, Question lxxi), and was adopted by the
Council of Trent. It is followed also by the
German Lutherans, except those of the school of
Bucer. This arrangement makes the First Commandment relate to false worship and to the worship of false gods as to a single subject and a single class of
sins to be guarded against -- the reference to idols being regarded as mere application of the precept to
adore but one
God and the prohibition as directed against the particular offense of idolatry alone. According to this manner of reckoning, the injunction forbidding the use of the Lord's Name in vain comes second in order; and the decimal number is safeguarded by making a division of the final precept on
concupiscence--the Ninth pointing to
sins of the flesh and the Tenth to desires for unlawful possession of
goods. Another division has been adopted by the
English and
Helvetian Protestant churches on the authority of
Philo Judæus,
Josephus,
Origen, and others, whereby two Commandments are made to cover the matter of
worship, and thus the numbering of the rest is advanced one higher; and the Tenth embraces both the Ninth and Tenth of the
Catholic division. It seems, however, as logical to separate at the end as to group at the beginning, for while one single object is aimed at under
worship, two specifically different
sins are forbidden under covetousness; if adultery and theft belong to two distinct species of
moral wrong, the same must be said of the desire to commit these evils.
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