20:1-17

Then God spoke all these words. He said, 'I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves.

'You shall have no other gods to rival me.

'You shall not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters under the earth.

'You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God and I punish a parent's fault in the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren among those who hate me; but I act with faithful love towards thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

'You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God, for Yahweh will not leave unpunished anyone who misuses his name.

'Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. For six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath for Yahweh your God. You shall do no work that day, neither you nor your son nor your daughter nor you servants, men or women, nor you animals nor the alien living with you. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens, earth and sea and all that these contain, but on the seventh day he rested; that is why Yahweh has blessed the Sabbath day and made it sacred.

'Honour your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.

'You shall not kill.

'You shall not commit adultery.

'You shall not steal.

'You shall not give false evidence against your neighbour.

'You shall not set your heart on your neighbour's house. You shall not set your heart on your neightbour's spouse, or servant, man or woman, or ox, or donkey, or any of your neighbour's posessions.

34:10-26

[Yahweh] then said, 'Look, I am now making a covenant: I shall work such wonders at the head of your whole people as have never been worked in any other country or nation, and all the people round you will see what Yahweh can do, for what I shall do through you will be awe-insipring. Mark, then, what I command you today. I am going to drive out the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites before you. Take care you make no pact with the inhabitants of the country which you are about to enter, or they will prove a snare in your community. You will tear down their altars, smash their cultic stones and cut down their sacred poles, for you will worship no other god, since Yahweh's name is the Jealous One; je is a jealous God. Make no pact with the inhabitants of the coutnry or, when they prostitute themselves to their own gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will partake of their sacrifice, and then you will choose wives for your sons from among their daughters, and their daughters, prostituting themselves to their own gods, will induce your sons to prostitute themselves to their gods.

'You will not cast metal gods for yourself.

'You will observe the feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days you will eat unleavened bread, as I have commanded you, at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in the month of Abib you came out of Egypt.

'All that first issues from the womb belongs to me: every male, every first-born of flock or herd. But the first-born donkey you will redeem with an animal from the flock; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck. All the first-born of your sons you will redeem, and no one will appear before me empty-handed.

'For six days you will labour, but on the seventh day you will rest; you will stop work even during ploughing and harvesting.

'You will observe the feast of Weeks, of the first-fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast Ingathering at the close of the year.

'Three times a year all your menfolk will appear before Lord Yahweh, God of Israel, for I shall dispossess the nations before you and extend your frontiers, and no one will set his heart on your territory when you go away to appear before Yahweh your God three times a year.

'You will not offer the blood of my sacrificial victim with leavened bread, nor is the victim offered at the feast of Passover to be left until the following day.

'You will bring the best of the first-fruits of your soil to the house of Yahweh your God.

'You will not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

Yahweh then said to Moses, 'Put these words in writing, for they are the terms of the covenant which I have made with you and with Israel.'

He stayed there with Yahweh for forty days and forty nights, eating and drinking nothing, and on the tablets he wrote the words of the covenant - the Ten Words.

Explicit Pronouncement of Identity:

Exodus 34:1

Yahweh said to Moses, 'Cut two tablets of stone like the first ones and come up to me on the mountain, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

Origin of the Phrase, "The Ten Commandments":

Exodus 34:27-28

[Moses] stayed there with Yahweh for forty days and forty nights, eating and drinking nothing, and on the tablets he wrote the words of the covenant - the Ten Words.

Comparison of Covenant Elements in Exodus 20 and 34:

As was seen in Section 2, comparing the two sections, at first, seems to correspond well to each other. The first two items of each covenant are a provision for exclusive worship of Yahweh, and a prohibition of idol construction. However, while the third item in the first section is a prohibition against blasphemy, the third item in the second section is an instruction to observe a national feast day. For the fourth item, both sections again come into agreement. Honoring the Sabbath is the last item on which both sections agree, however.

The first section follows with a brief and simple list of prohibitions (murder, adultery, theft, perjury, coveting) prefaced with an exhortation to honor parents. The second section, however, follows with a completely unrelated collection of demands and prohibitions. The fifth item is an instruction to observe two additional national feast days. The sixth item decrees that the firstborn of every womb belongs to Yahweh, be it animal or human. The seventh item decrees that all Israelite males must visit the Temple every year. The eighth item is a prohibition against offering sacrifices to Yahweh with leavened bread. The ninth item decrees that the firstfruits of the harvest must be brought to the Temple. The tenth and final item of the covenant is a prohibition against ‘boiling a goat in its mother’s milk,’ which is assumed to be a dietary prohibition against mixing meat and dairy.

Discussion of Comparison:

I conclude that this comparison shows that while both the first narrative (19-31) and the second narrative (33-40) contain a record of Yahweh’s covenant with the Israelites, the composition of both covenants are not identical. However, both the literary structure and the inclusion of identical items in identical order indicate that both covenants are related. Both covenants list ten items; both covenants have their first, second, and fourth items in common.

Besides those three identical items, the two covenants differ greatly in their composition. The first covenant (20) follows the first four items with a short and simple list of prohibitions, with

no explanation given for any. In contrast, the second covenant (34) gives an explanation for two of its items: the cause for the Feast of Unleavened Bread and a reason for the triennial visit to the Temple are given.

In addition to the differences within the text of the two covenants, one major difference is apparent after the second covenant has been made by Yahweh. In Section 4.3 I show the verses that immediately follow the covenant record from the second narrative. These verses are strikingly different from the first narrative for two reasons: first, they indicate that the preceding ten items compose the entirety of the covenant between Yahweh and the Israelites, and second, this is the only textual reference the ten items as the ‘Ten Commandments.’ In contrast, the first narrative (as seen in Section 2.1) does not record that only ten items compose the covenant between Yahweh and the Israelites. In fact, Yahweh communicates a great deal of information to Moses in the first narrative before he finally presents him with stone tablets in chapter 31. In addition, the first narrative does not contain any text which refers to the first ten items of the covenant as the ‘Ten Commandments’, as is directly seen in the second narrative.

If my conclusion is accurate, then the first ten items of the covenant recorded in the first narrative are in at least partial disagreement with the ten items of the covenant recorded in the second narrative, which are explicitly named as the ‘Ten Commandments.” In addition, when taken in context with the overarching narrative from chapters 19 through 40, an explicit discrepancy is seen between the two recordings of the covenant. According to the larger narrative (Section 4.3), both the first and second transcriptions of the covenant are identical, but this analysis shows that to be inaccurate.