Ask anyone on the street how many commandments are in the Bible and they’ll almost certainly shout "Ten!" while thinking of Charlton Heston or a Sunday school felt board. It’s the standard answer. It’s what we’ve been told for centuries. But if you actually sit down and start flipping through the thin, onion-skin pages of the Old Testament, things get way more complicated than two stone tablets.
Honestly, the real number depends entirely on who you ask and how they count.
Are we talking about the Big Ten? Or are we talking about the massive, 613-rule legal code that governed every single aspect of ancient Jewish life? There's even a weirdly specific "Ritual Decalogue" tucked away in Exodus 34 that most people completely ignore because it talks about not boiling a young goat in its mother's milk.
The Famous Ten (And Why We Can't Agree on Them)
When people search for how many commandments are in the bible, they usually mean the Decalogue. These are the heavy hitters. You find them first in Exodus 20 and then again, slightly tweaked, in Deuteronomy 5.
But here is where it gets kind of weird: different religions don't even number them the same way.
Jews consider the very first "commandment" to be a statement of identity: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt." They don't see it as a rule, but as the foundation for everything else. Meanwhile, many Protestants split the bit about "no other gods" and "no idols" into two separate commands. Catholics and Lutherans? They group those together but then split the "don't covet" part into two—one for your neighbor's wife and one for his property.
So even when we agree there are ten, we can't agree on which ones are 1, 2, or 10. It’s a mess, really.
The Massive List: All 613 Mitzvot
If you want to be a literalist about the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh), the number jumps from ten to a staggering 613. These are known as the Mitzvot.
This isn't just a random guess. A 12th-century scholar named Maimonides (also known as the Rambam) famously sat down and codified the whole lot in his work, the Sefer Hamitzvot. He found 248 positive commandments—the "thou shalts"—and 365 negative ones—the "thou shalt nots." It’s sort of poetic that there are 365 negative ones, one for every day of the year.
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Most of these aren't about murder or stealing. They're about agriculture, leprosy, what to wear, how to sacrifice a bull, and the incredibly complex laws of ritual purity.
- Rules about leaving the corners of your field for the poor.
- Instructions on how to tie the fringes (tzitzit) on your clothes.
- Laws forbidding you from wearing wool and linen mixed together.
- Strict guidelines on how a judge should handle a court case.
Basically, if you were an ancient Israelite, these were the "how-to" manual for staying in a covenant with God.
The "Other" Ten Commandments
Most people have no clue that Exodus 34 contains another list that is explicitly called the "Ten Commandments."
In the story, Moses breaks the first set of tablets in a fit of rage because the people were worshipping a golden calf. He goes back up the mountain, and God gives him more rules to write down. But this list is different. It’s very focused on festivals and dietary laws.
For instance, it includes:
- Not making cast idols (classic).
- Observing the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
- Redeeming the firstborn of your livestock.
- Not offering the blood of a sacrifice with anything leavened.
Bible scholars often call this the "Ritual Decalogue." It’s fascinating because it suggests that the "Ten Commandments" weren't just one static list, but a category of law that evolved or was emphasized differently depending on the context of the story.
What About the New Testament?
If you jump forward to the New Testament, the question of how many commandments are in the bible takes a turn toward simplicity—or maybe just a different kind of complexity.
Jesus was once asked by a lawyer which commandment was the greatest. He didn't pick one of the 613. Instead, He summarized the whole law into two: Love God with everything you've got, and love your neighbor as yourself.
He basically took the giant, dusty library of rules and boiled them down into a concentrated essence. Later, in the Gospel of John, He adds what He calls a "New Commandment": to love one another just as He loved His followers.
So, if you’re a Christian, do you have 10, 613, 2, or 1? It depends on your theology. Most modern Christians believe the "moral" laws (like don't kill) still apply, while the "ceremonial" laws (like not eating pork) were fulfilled and are no longer binding.
Why the Numbers Keep Shifting
The reason it's so hard to give a single number is that the Bible wasn't written as a modern legal textbook. It’s a collection of ancient documents written over a thousand years.
The word "commandment" itself is used loosely. Is a "decree" a commandment? Is a "statute" different from a "law"?
In the Hebrew, the Ten Commandments are actually called the Aseret ha-Dibrot, which literally translates to "The Ten Sayings" or "The Ten Words." They weren't even called "commandments" in the strictest sense by the people who first received them. They were seen as the terms of a treaty between a King (God) and His people.
Practical Insights for the Curious
When you’re trying to wrap your head around this, don't get bogged down in the math. The number matters less than the function.
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If you're studying this for a class or just personal interest, keep these things in mind:
First, distinguish between the Moral Law and the Civil/Ceremonial Law. Most of those 613 rules were specifically for the ancient nation of Israel to function as a state. Unless you’re an ancient Levite priest, you probably don't need to worry about the specific way to handle bird sacrifices.
Second, look at the groupings. The first few of the Ten Commandments usually deal with your relationship with the Divine (vertical), while the rest deal with how you treat other people (horizontal). This structure shows up everywhere in biblical ethics.
Third, acknowledge the cultural context. A lot of the 613 commandments were meant to make the Israelites look and act "holy," which in that context meant "different" from the surrounding nations like the Canaanites or Egyptians.
Next Steps for Deepening Your Knowledge:
- Compare the Lists: Open a Bible to Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Read them side-by-side. You'll notice the reason for keeping the Sabbath is different in each one—Exodus points to Creation, while Deuteronomy points to the escape from slavery.
- Research Maimonides: If you’re a glutton for detail, look up the "Mishneh Torah." It breaks down all 613 laws into categories that are actually surprisingly logical.
- Check the Categorization: Look into how your specific denomination (if you have one) numbers the Ten Commandments. It’s a quick way to understand the lens through which you're viewing the text.
The reality is that "Ten" is just the tip of the iceberg. Whether you're looking at the 613 laws of the Torah or the simplified Great Commandment of the New Testament, the Bible is less of a checklist and more of a complex, ancient framework for how to live a life aligned with a specific set of values.