Why did God give us 10 commandments and not any other number?<\/p>\n\t
I suppose one could claim that ten commandments were all that God needed to express His summary of the Law given to Moses. It was short enough to fit on two stone tablets (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13), but still expressed enough detail for the people to understand what God wanted from them.<\/p>\n
Yet, there is a bit of subtly going on in the background. There are actually eleven imperatives in the Ten Commandments, they are just grouped to make ten.<\/p>\n
Numbers have meaning to people. If I say “nine one one,” people in the United States immediately think about an emergency since this is our universal phone number to contact emergency personnel. But if I say “nine eleven” we think about the tragedy that occurred on September 11th, 2001. The number thirteen has long been associated with unlucky things. It is so ingrained in society that buildings avoid having a thirteenth floor.<\/p>\n
Hebrew society was the same. Without going into all the various numbers, we will note that in Israel the number ten was associated with completeness. You have ten fingers and ten toes, so you are a whole person. The number 10 was used as a round unit, much like English speakers talk about an even dozen (12). When Hannah complained about her barrenness, her husband responded, “Am I not better to you than ten sons?<\/em>” (I Samuel 1:8). Ten was the smallest civil unit (Exodus 18:21) and the smallest military unit (Deuteronomy 1:15).<\/p>\n The idea of completeness even shows up in combinations. The number 40 represented a complete period of trial, probably because of the forty years in the wilderness and the memory that the rain fell for 40 days and nights at the beginning of the flood. It was a complete trial because it was a multiple of 10.<\/p>\n Hence, there were Ten Commandments because they were a complete summary of the law given to Moses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Question: Why did God give us 10 commandments and not any other number? Answer: I suppose one could claim that ten commandments were all that God needed to express His summary of the Law given to Moses. It was short enough to fit on two stone tablets (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 4:13), but still expressed enough…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[210],"class_list":["post-3110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-symbolism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":42388,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-many-commandments-are-there-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":3110,"position":0},"title":"How many commandments are there now?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: How many commandments are there 10 or 9 or 11? Could you please confirm, one way or the other, that in the New Testament there are only nine commandments mentioned as commandments? Is that missing commandment is the fourth original commandment \"Keep Holy the Sabbath Day\"? So does this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1945,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/do-the-ten-commandments-apply-to-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":3110,"position":1},"title":"Do the Ten Commandments apply to Christians?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 23, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: If we, as Christians, no longer follow the laws of the Old Testament, does that also apply to the Ten Commandments? Answer: People today tend to look at the Ten Commandments as an entity separate from the Mosaical Law. Yet, these ten commandments were the prelude to the body\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29814,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-are-the-commandments-mentioned-in-exodus-34-different-from-those-mentioned-in-exodus-20\/","url_meta":{"origin":3110,"position":2},"title":"Why are the commandments mentioned in Exodus 34 different from those mentioned in Exodus 20?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I have been reading the Old Testament and I am confused as to Exodus 20 and Exodus 34 where there are two sets of the ten commandments God gave Moses. The second set is different from the first set.\u00a0 In Exodus 34 God said to use the same words\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":74269,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-were-the-ten-commandments-placed-in-the-ark-but-the-law-was-placed-beside-the-ark\/","url_meta":{"origin":3110,"position":3},"title":"Why were the Ten Commandments placed in the Ark but the Law was placed beside the Ark?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 13, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi sir, I would like you to help me on this matter: Why were the Ten Commandments only placed in the Ark of the Covenant? Again, why was the Law in Deuteronomy 31:26 placed beside the ark of the covenant and not inside the ark of the covenant? I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43979,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/does-the-word-commandments-always-refer-to-the-ten-commandments\/","url_meta":{"origin":3110,"position":4},"title":"Does the word “commandments” always refer to the Ten Commandments?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Hi, I have read your response about\u00a0the Ten Commandments issue and Jesus' commandments. It seems that you are making good points in your explanation. However, a friend of mine explained this verse to me. And I think he has good points, too. Will you please check his arguments for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":82435,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/are-the-ten-commandments-the-first-covenant\/","url_meta":{"origin":3110,"position":5},"title":"Are the Ten Commandments the first covenant?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"December 25, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: The Bible directly states that the Ten Commandments are the first covenant. Do you disagree? Answer: If the Bible\u00a0directly\u00a0states that the Ten Commandments are the first covenant, you could cite where it is found, but you did not. You made an assertion without proof and challenged me to decide\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}