Everyone seems clear that there are ten commandments in the "Decalogue." Exod. 34:28; Deut. 4:13; 10:4 refer to them as the "ten words." There are, however, at least three different understandings of how to arrange the commandments to come out to ten.
Here are the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 in the three usual traditional arrangements. The first column contains the prevailing Rabbinic Jewish division. The second column contains the division found in Philo (Decalogue 50-51), Josephus (Antiquities 3:91-92), the Greek Church Writers, and most Protestant churches. The third column contains the division used by Torah Scrolls, Ibn Ezra, Augustine, and by Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches.
Also, notice that Jewish and Christian Bibles divide the verses up differently. The last two columns of the table give the verse numbers used in Jewish and Christian Bibles.
| Command Number | Text in English Translation | Verse Number | |||
| Rabbis | Philo | Scrolls | (new Jewish Publication Society translation) | Jewish | Christian |
| 1 | 1 | 1 | I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage: | 20:2 | 20:2 |
| 2 | You shall have no other gods beside Me. | 20:3 | 20:3 | ||
| 2 | You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. | 20:4 | 20:4 | ||
| You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the LORD your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of those who reject Me, | 20:5 | 20:5 | |||
| but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments. | 20:6 | 20:6 | |||
| 3 | 3 | 2 | You shall not swear falsely by the name of the LORD your God; for the LORD will not clear one who swears falsely by His name. | 20:7 | 20:7 |
| 4 | 4 | 3 | Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. | 20:8 | 20:8 |
| Six days you shall labor and do all your work. | 20:9 | 20:9 | |||
| But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work -- you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. | 20:10 | 20:10 | |||
| For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. | 20:11 | 20:11 | |||
| 5 | 5 | 4 | Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land which the LORD your God is giving you. | 20:12 | 20:12 |
| 6 | 6 | 5 | You shall not murder. | 20:13a | 20:13 |
| 7 | 7 | 6 | You shall not commit adultery. | 20:13b | 20:14 |
| 8 | 8 | 7 | You shall not steal. | 20:13c | 20:15 |
| 9 | 9 | 8 | You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. | 20:13d | 20:16 |
| 10 | 10 | 9 | You shall not covet your neighbor's house: | 20:14a | 20:17a |
| 10 | you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's. | 20:14b | 20:17b | ||
Another, somewhat different version of the Ten Commandments appears in Deuteronomy 5.
The Nash Papyrus (from the first or second century B.C.E.) contains yet another version of the Ten Commandments, in which the prohibition of adultery precedes the prohibition of murder.
Masoretic Bibles (Hebrew Bibles with vowels and cantillation marks) provide two different sets of cantillation for the Ten Commandments in both Exodus and Deuteronomy.
Source: W. Gumther Plaut, ed., The Torah: A Modern Commentary (New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981), 533-535.