Decalogue (Gr. dekalogos, 'ten words' or 'sentences'), the ten commandments. The 'ten words,' as they are called in Exodus xxxiv. 28, and elsewhere, are prefixed to the collection of laws called the 'Book of the Covenant' (Ex. xx. 22 to xxiii. 33), and with it form part of the 'Prophetic Narrative' of the Pentateuch (here extending from
Ex. xix. 3 to xxiv. 15). They are quoted at length in Deut. v. 1-21, and, besides minor differences, with remarkable extensions and variations in the fourth, fifth, and tenth commandments. The Divine rest after Creation is given as the ground of the fourth commandment in Ex. xx. 11, the first part of that verse being based on Ex. xxxi. 17b, and the second part on Genesis, ii. 2b, both of which form part of the 'Priestly Narrative' of the Pentateuch. In Deuteronomy this reason for the commandment is omitted, and appended to the commandment there is a statement of the purpose of the Sabbath (based, indeed, on Ex. xxiii. 12), 'in order that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou,' and of the motive to keep it—viz. Israel's gratitude to Jehovah for deliverance from his own servitude in Egypt. It has been conjectured that the Decalogue in its original form was entirely without comments, and that all the commandments were expressed with the same terseness and brevity as in the first, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth.
The prohibitions of other gods and of image-worship being closely connected, and supported in common by the reason annexed in Ex. xx. 5, 6, were even in ancient times taken together as one of the Ten Words; the number ten being made out of the rest in various ways. The Jews commonly considered the prefatory words in Ex. xx. 2 (Deut. v. 6), 'I am the Lord,' &c., as forming the first Word. The Lutheran Church, following another ancient Jewish division, divides the prohibition of evil concupiscence into two—the ninth and tenth commandments, making 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house' (which in Ex. xx. 17, is mentioned first) the ninth. The Roman Catholic Church, following Augustine, finds the ninth commandment in the first clause of Deut. v. 21, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.' In the other Protestant Churches, and in the Greek Church, as also in Josephus, Philo, and the earliest Church Fathers, the prohibitions of other gods and of image-worship are counted as the first and second commandments, and that of evil desire as one—viz. the tenth. The Catholic and Protestant Churches agree in making 'Honour thy father and thy mother' begin the second table of the Decalogue; but Delitzsch, Oehler, and other scholars hold that the ten commandments fall into two sets of five, the first including the commandments of piety to God and to those whom he has invested with natural authority; the second, the commandments of probity, or of duty to one's neighbour. See PENTATEUCH; Driver's Notes on Lessons from the Pentateuch (New York, 1887); Stanley's Christian Institutions, chap. xvii.