Numbering of Ten Commandments
I’ve always wondered why Luther restructured the Ten Commandments by getting rid of the Second Commandment and splitting the Tenth into two nearly identical commandments. I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
The “Ten Commandments” of Exodus 34:28 is literally “ten words” in Hebrew. Because the Bible does not enumerate the ten words, people have assigned different numerical values to them. That explains the three systems of numbering the Ten Commandments that have long existed.
Martin Luther did not restructure the Ten Commandments; he simply retained the numbering system of the Roman Catholic Church.
A second system that most Protestant churches use splits the First Commandment into two commandments and contains one commandment on coveting.
A third system frames the first “word” as an introduction: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). There is then one commandment on idolatry and one commandment on coveting.
None of the numbering systems omit the content of the Ten Commandments. The systems simply arrange the content differently.