In this clip Cy Kellett and apologist Joe Heschmeyer discuss the reasons for different numbering of the 10 commandments.
Transcript:
Caller: Well, how come the Catholics have their Ten Commandments and we’ve got our Ten Commandments?
Joe: That’s a great question. So there are two issues that give rise to this. The first is that the Ten Commandments are given twice in Exodus 20 and then Deuteronomy 5, and they’re not given in exactly the same order, which is strange. The second issue is that they’re not numbered in the Bible. Actually, we’ll add a third issue. They’re called in the Bible the Decalogue, which means the ten words. Now, that could mean Ten Commandments, but it doesn’t have to mean commandments. But either way you look at it, there’s certainly more than 10 words given. There’s certainly more than 10 commandments given. And so trying to figure out where to number them is a little tricky. Different people have numbered them differently throughout the ages.
So the numbering you’re used to, like what you’d get in a Baptist church, you’ll find the same numbering in the Eastern Catholic Church. On the other hand, Western Catholics number them more along the lines of Deuteronomy than along Exodus. You’ll find that numbering as well in a Lutheran church. So Protestants don’t agree, and Catholics use different numbering among Catholics. It’s confusing. And then to make it more confusing, the Jewish numbering begins with Exodus 20, verse 2: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” This is only an issue of how we number them. The same content is true on all sides. We agree on what Exodus 20 says; we agree on what Deuteronomy 5 says. The only question is which number is which? And so it’s not a substantive disagreement.
Caller: Well, since you allowed us to be mean, while I was on hold, I went to Deuteronomy 5, and I happened to have a New King James here. I just so happened in Deuteronomy 5 to have circled the bullet points, as you talk about, and these seem to line up exactly with Exodus. But what I noticed on the Catholic version is they divide what I would call the tenth commandment, the coveting part, into two different covet clauses. They ignore this one about “You shall not make for yourself any carved image.” That’s the difference in the wording that Joe was talking about.
Joe: So we would have that as part of number one.
Cy: It’s not that the words aren’t missing; they’re just in number one.
Caller: Okay?
Cy: The “You shall have no other gods before me,” and then you shall not… So you’re saying what that means is you shall not make a carved image and bow down to it, and that’s all part of it. That’s all meaning no other gods.
Caller: Right. So what Exodus and Deuteronomy covet part…
Joe: Yeah. So, okay, on the covet part, the numbering in Deuteronomy 5 is clear on this in verse 21: “Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife.” This is the sin of lust, and that’s the ninth commandment. And then after that, “And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” That’s greed. That’s a different kind of covetousness. So they’re two different sins because sexual covetousness and material covetousness are just not the same thing.
Now, you can group those two things together as just a prohibition against coveting, and that’s one way of numbering them. I’m not saying it’s bad to do that; it’s fine to do that. You can also number those as two different sins where one is about the sin of lust and one is about the sin of covetous greed.
Caller: Very good. Well, I’ll take that because that makes sense to me as far as how to break that one up.
Joe: And then, if I may, the other two things to point out there, when it says “don’t make the pesel” (P-E-C-E-L is the Hebrew transliteration there), it literally means engraved image or graven image or something like that. But in context, it always means an idol. So it’s not literally wrong to, like, engrave a quarter, for example. And God even commands in Exodus the engraving of cherubim to put on the Ark of the Covenant. So it’s not a literal prohibition against engraving things; it is a prohibition against idolatry.
So one of the other reasons we number them as we do in the West is because the first commandment is about not having other gods, and an idol is having another god. So if you understand what is being prohibited in the prohibition against graven images, it is an extension of, or a part of, “You shall have no gods before me.”
Caller: So when it comes to all of the statues, this will be the other argument. So we’ve covered the graven image part, and that’ll be okay. But when we have all of the saints, let’s say, how do I defend the fact that the Catholic Church has all these saints that they pray to?
Joe: Yeah, great question. So it depends on what we mean by prayer. Because if prayer is worship, which is what many Protestants understand it to be, then it would be wrong to do that. But biblically, prayer and worship are related, but they’re not the same thing.
So to give just an example, where could you pray at the time of Christ? Well, the answer was anywhere. You could go in your room to pray; you could go… The Pharisees liked to go to the street corners in the synagogue to pray so that it could be seen by others. You could pray wherever you wanted to. Jesus would go to a lonely place. Everyone could pray wherever they wanted to; they knew this. What you couldn’t do was offer worship in the strict sense of worship because worship is a sacrificial offering. That’s at the heart of worship.
In John 4, when Jesus and the Samaritan woman are talking, one of the things she points out correctly is that the Samaritans worshiped on Mount Gerizim and the Jews worshiped at the temple in Jerusalem. But that didn’t mean that was the only place they prayed.
So I mention this to say one of the reasons people sometimes think Catholics worship saints is because they don’t know biblically the difference between prayer and worship. But prayer is conversation. It’s asking for things, like “Pray, Tao, I want you to tell me something.” I’m asking you to tell me; that’s literally a prayer. And that’s not… I’m not worshiping you when I do that.
And so if we ask the saints to ask for things for us, that’s not worship. That is prayer. It is conversation with them, but it’s not worship. And so should Christians have that kind of conversation with other Christians where they ask for their prayers? They should. In fact, we’re told to make supplications for one another, and we’re told to go to one another when we need prayers. We see St. Paul doing this, and we see, you know, there’s this long history of Christians praying for one another as part of the body of Christ.
So I would just say this: Number one, should the members of the body of Christ pray for each other and ask for prayers from one another? Yes. Number two, is the body of Christ on earth only, or is it also in heaven? Well, it’s also in heaven. Number three, so is it okay to ask other members of the body of Christ that are in heaven to pray for us? Seemingly, yes.
In fact, if we take the Bible seriously, that the prayer of a righteous man is efficacious, people who are in right relation with God will have their prayers heard in a way that those mired in sin won’t. So one of the great things about the saints is you’re not worried that they’re secretly mired in sin. You’re not worried that they’re far from God. They’ll actually pray for you, where your Christian neighbor on earth may or may not. So go to your neighbor on earth; I’m not saying don’t, but it makes sense to go to your Christian neighbor who’s in heaven as well.
Cy: I’ll tell you what, Mark, I’d love to send you a book. Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. Very, very helpful and enlightening. And even when you try to be mean, I gotta say, you’re not a very mean person.
So if you’d like the book, we have a book called *The Saints Pray for You*, which is about the very question that you just asked. If you would like it, all you have to do is stay on the line and give us an address, and we’ll send it to you there.