p iii Reading from Right to

Leū

Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour

of David J.A. Clines

edited by
J. Cheryl Exum and H.G.M. Williamson

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Supplement Series 373

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
1
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Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
2
 P 290 TWELVE COMMANDMENTS—THREE STAGES: A NEW
THEORY ON THE FORMATION OF THE DECALOGUE
Bernhard Lang

Although the Decalogue, considered here in its Deutero-

nomic version (Deut. 5), is one of the most famous and famil-
iar texts of the Hebrew Bible, it is far from being easily
understood. In this paper, I will argue that once it is realized
that the Decalogue reached its present form by stages, some
of the interpretative problems of this text find their solu-
tion. I distinguish three successive stages of textual growth.
e first stage is a short series of five exclusively religious
commandments; the second stage adds the five non-reli-
gious injunctions of the Decalogue’s ‘second table’ and
thereby creates a list of ten commandments; the third stage,
with its addition of the Sabbath commandment, gives the
text its traditional form. At the third stage one has apparent-
ly counted six commandments of the first and six com-
mandments of the second table, so that the present text was
most likely understood as a dodecalogue.

1. e Decalogue (Deuteronomic Version), Considered as a Whole

Although scholars have spent much energy on elucidating
the Decalogue, this biblical text remains in many ways a
riddle. In what follows I offer a number of new suggestions
that may help our understanding of this difficult passage. It
may be best to start with a working translation of Deut.

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
3
5:6–22 which incorporates some of the suggestions I shall
make and explain in detail:

(6) I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out

of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
[I] (7) You shall have no other gods before me.
[II] (8) You shall not make for yourself a graven
image, or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth;
p 291 [III] (9) you shall not bow down to them
or serve them; for I Yahweh your God am a jeal-
ous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children to the third and fourth gener-
ation of those who hate me, (10) but showing
steadfast love to thousands of those who love
me and keep my commandments.
[IV] (11) You shall not take the name of Yahweh
your God in vain: for Yahweh will not hold him
guiltless who takes his name in vain.
[V] (12) Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
us Yahweh your God commands you: (13) Six
days you shall labour, and do all your work; (14)
but the seventh day is a Sabbath for Yahweh your
God; in it you shall not do any work, you, your
son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or
your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or
any of your ca le, or the sojourner who is with-
in your gates, that your manservant and your

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
4
 maidservant may rest as well as you. (15) You
shall remember that you were a servant in the
land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought
you out thence with a mighty hand and an out-
stretched arm; therefore Yahweh your God
commands you to keep the Sabbath day.
[VI] (16) Honour your father and your mother.
us Yahweh your God commands you that
your days may be prolonged, and that it may go
well with you, in the land which Yahweh your
God has given you:
[VII] (17) You shall not kill.
[VIII] (18) Neither shall you commit adultery.
[IX] (19) Neither shall you steal.
[X] (20) Neither shall you bear false witness
against your neighbour.
[XI] (21) Neither shall you covet your
neighbour’s wife;
[XII] and you shall not desire your neighbour’s
house, his field, or his manservant, or his maid-
servant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is
your neighbour’s.

First of all I must explain where and how my translation

departs from standard versions found in our printed Bibles.
Part of the Sabbath commandment is generally rendered as
follows:

(12) Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as

Yahweh your God commanded you. (13) Six days

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
5
 you shall labour, and do all your work; (14) but
the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your
God; (in it) you shall not do any work … (a er
RSV).

e words k’šr ṣwk yhwh are generally understood as refer-

ring to an earlier occasion on which God had given this
commandment: ‘keep it holy, as Yahweh your God com-
manded you (earlier)’, and the implication might be that in
Deuteronomy, Moses, by quoting the Decalogue, refers to
God’s original commandment given at Mount Sinai. A more
natural understanding of the Hebrew wording implies that
the phrase, rather than referring back, actually is designed
to introduce what follows:
p 292 (12) Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it
holy. us [= as follows] Yahweh your God com-
mands you: (13) Six days you shall labour, and do
all your work; (14) but the seventh day is a Sab-
bath of Yahweh your God; (in it) you shall not
do any work …

is translation can be justified philologically on the basis

of a recently published ancient Hebrew inscription; dating
from c. 700 BCE it is presumably a scribal exercise text. It
reads: ‘ us (= as follows) commands you Ashyahu the king:
To be given into the hand of Zakaryahu silver of Tarshish
for the house of Yahweh—3 shekels’ (Lang 1998).1
1 Another passage that may involve the forward-looking use of
k’šr can be found in Deut. 18: ‘but they shall have no inheri-

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
6
 Looking at Deut. 5:16, where we again find the words k’šr
ṣwk yhwh, we can make another observation. Traditionally,
the verse in question is rendered as follows:
(16) Honour your father and your mother, as
Yahweh your God commanded you; that your days
may be prolonged, and that it may go well with
you, in the land which Yahweh your God gives
you (a er RSV).

I have o en wondered why life and well-being in Yah-

weh’s land are a ached to just this one commandment, the
one concerning the parents. I am sure my students remem-
ber having heard me explain that the divine promise,
though literally associated with the parental commandmen-
t, should actually be taken as being valid for each one of the
Decalogue commandments. is view can be supported on
the basis of the Deuteronomic speech of Moses in which he
addresses the Israelites, saying:
erefore you shall keep his statutes and his
commandments, which I command you this day,
that it may go well with you, and with your chil-
dren a er you, and that you may prolong your
days in the land which Yahweh your God gives
you for ever (Deut. 4:40).

tance among their brothers; Yahweh is their inheritance. us

(k’šr) he told them: this shall be the priests’ due from the peo-
ple …’ (Deut. 18:2–3, disregarding the Masoretic verse division
between vv. 2 and 3).
Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
7
Now as I consider the implications of the possibility of start-
ing an ancient Hebrew sentence with the words k’šr ṣwk,
implied in the Hebrew inscription just mentioned, I prefer
to dissociate the promise given in v. 16 from its specific and
exclusive association with the parental commandment. I
suggest the following rendering:
(16) Honour your father and your mother. us
[= as explained above] Yahweh your God commands
you, that your days may be prolonged, and that
it may go well with you, in the land which
Yahweh your God gives you.

is time, the words seem to refer to all the previ-

p 293
ously given commandments (exclusive worship of Yahweh,
no images, etc.), including, of course, the injunction to
honour one’s parents. But the phrase may also, in Janus fash-
ion, look forward, introducing the commandments that fol-
low:
(16) Honour your father and your mother. us
[= as explained in what follows] Yahweh your God
commands you, that your days may be prolonged,
and that it may go well with you, in the land
which Yahweh your God gives you: (17) You
shall not kill. (18) Neither shall you commit adul-
tery.

In the Exodus version of the Decalogue, things are dif-

ferent. Here the promise is a ached exclusively to the
parental commandment: ‘Honour your father and your
Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
8
mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which
Yahweh your God gives you’ (Exod. 20:12). I take the entire
Exodus version of the Decalogue to be a later adaptation of
the original Deuteronomic text, made by someone who no
longer understood the original function of the promise as
the conclusion of the ‘first table’.
As is well known, the Decalogue is in two parts: the first
gives religious injunctions (vv. 7–16) and the second ‘civil’
ones (vv. 17–21). is pa ern is rough rather than neat, for
the last commandment of the first series appears, at least at
first sight, to be a non-religious one: ‘Honour your father
and your mother’. Read in their ancient Near Eastern cul-
tural context, these words admonish people to support and
care for their aged parents (Lang 1977). However, a closer
analysis reveals that in the context of the Decalogue, the
parental commandment may well be classified as ‘religious’.
In two places, the Decalogue refers to parents; the first ref-
erence is to ‘the iniquity of the fathers’ (v. 9), the second one
to honouring ‘your father and your mother’ (v. 16). ese
two sets of parents cannot be identical. e solution is as
follows: the Decalogue, in its (at first sight invisible) ‘deep
structure’, thinks in terms of three generations. e first
generation is that of the ‘bad’ ancestors, those who commit-
ted ‘the iniquity of the fathers’. is expression can be used
to determine the date of our text. It must be the time a er
the end of the Judaean state, that is, a er 586 BCE. e pas-
sage blames the national disaster—the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile—on ‘the iniquity of the

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
9
fathers’, that is, their violation of the commandment to
worship Yahweh exclusively. e ‘fathers’ are the immedi-
ate fathers of the generation of the exile: the men who in
609 BCE defected from King Josiah’s reform by returning to
Judah’s traditionally polytheistic religion. Due to the sin of
the fathers, the present or second (exilic) generation finds
itself in a situation of punishment. e present
generation—the second one on our counting, the one to
whom the Decalogue p 294 is addressed—is challenged to
detach itself from ‘the iniquity of the fathers’ and, by firmly
embracing the proper form of religion, to stop the divine
punishment under which they suffer. Finally, the third gen-
eration—the sons and daughters of the exiles—is admon-
ished to honour their parents’ decision to stay faithful to
the exclusive worship of the one God. e discontinuity
between the first and the second generation is balanced by
the continuity between the second and third generation.
is continuity was no doubt primarily seen in religious
terms, and so it makes sense to include the commandment
‘Honour your father and your mother’ among the religious
injunctions.
at the Decalogue prioritizes religious commandments
over civil ones also comes to the fore when we start count-
ing its words. Counting the words of biblical passages
smacks of arcane numerology, and most biblical scholars
refrain from engaging in this doubtful art. But, occasionally,
counting does yield results that are interesting if not actual-
ly relevant to exegesis. is seems to be the case with the

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
10
Decalogue. e Decalogue, beginning with v. 6 (‘I am Yah-
weh your God’) and ending with v. 21 (‘or anything that is
your neighbour’s’) has 189 Hebrew words; of these, 146 are
taken up by religious commandments (from v. 7 to v. 16a);
by contrast, only 27 words are used for civil injunctions
(from v. 17 to v. 21). e word at the very centre—no. 95 of
189 words—is l-yhwh, ‘for Yahweh’, and this expression may
be taken as a kind of religious slogan of the Decalogue
compiler. It was no doubt intentional that the compiler
placed the expression ‘for Yahweh’ at the very centre of his
text, and that the Decalogue uses this divine name ten times
(no more and no less frequently).
We could stop at this point and enjoy the idea of having
made some progress in understanding an important biblical
text. It is tempting, however, to offer reasonable specula-
tions on how the Decalogue gradually grew and eventually
came to have the form we now read in the Bible. is will be
done in what follows.

2. Toward a Prehistory of the Decalogue

Several features of the Decalogue call for an explanation: (1)

Why are there, according to the most natural counting,
twelve rather than ten commandments? e Decalogue
itself does not force us to look for exactly ten (rather than
twelve, or any other number) commandments; neverthe-
less, the Bible does occasionally refer to the Decalogue as
the ‘ten words’ (Deut. 4:13), though without telling us how to
count. ere seem to be p 295 more commandments and

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
11
prohibitions than ten. A possible solution might be the
assumption that the Decalogue is not transmi ed in its orig-
inal form, for an originally shorter text may have been
expanded, perhaps by the addition of certain command-
ments. (2) e second problematic feature is v. 16b, for it
conveys a sense of closure in the middle of the Decalogue:
‘ us [= as explained above] Yahweh your God commands you,
that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well
with you, in the land which Yahweh your God gives you’.
Here the solution may be the assumption that the original,
shorter Decalogue ended at v. 16b. (3) A third—and to the
non-specialist no doubt less pressing—problem has to do
with the reference to the Sabbath (vv. 12–15). Scholars
assume that the Sabbath originated not in a Deuteronomic
milieu, but in a ‘sacerdotal’ one; this can be concluded from
the fact that, outside of the Decalogue, Deuteronomy and
Deuteronomistic literature never refer to the Sabbath; so-
called priestly texts, by contrast, have several versions of
the commandment to keep the Sabbath day (Exod. 31:12–17;
35:1–3; Lev. 19:3; 23:3; Num. 15:32–36; see Lang 2001a). So one
wonders whether the Decalogue in Deuteronomy 5 original-
ly lacked the commandment to keep the sabbath day, and it
was introduced at a later stage of textual development.
Considering all these issues I have made an earlier
a empt to reconstruct the history of the Decalogue (Lang
2001b). In what follows I offer a revised, somewhat simpler
version, one that is more economical in its critical assump-
tions. I present my reconstruction in the hope that the anal-

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
12
ysis will challenge others to engage with it in critical dia-
logue and either find more arguments to support it or
refute my speculations.

Stage 1: e Pentalogue

(6) I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out

of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
[I] (7) You shall have no other gods before me.
[II] (8) You shall not make for yourself a graven
image, or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth;
[III] (9) you shall not bow down to them or serve
them; for I Yahweh your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate me, (10) but showing steadfast
love to thousands of those who love me and
keep my commandments.
[IV] (11) You shall not take the name of Yahweh
your God in vain: for Yahweh will not hold him
guiltless who takes his name in vain.
p 296 [V] (16) Honour your father and your
mother.
us Yahweh your God commands you that
your days may be prolonged, and that it may go
well with you, in the land which Yahweh your
God has given you.

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
13
 e text seems to have been compiled from several build-
ing blocks—prohibitions in which God speaks in the first
person and others that refer to God in the third person.
ese building blocks must have belonged to different, now
lost textual structures, but were reused here and le intact,
presumably because of their sacred or at least traditional
character. Compiled of somewhat heterogeneous, first-per-
son and third-person commandments, the text was framed
by the self-presentation of God—‘I am Yahweh your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
of bondage’—and the conclusion: ‘ us Yahweh your God
commands you, that your days may be prolonged, and that
it may go well with you, in the land which Yahweh your God
has given you’. Reconstructed in this manner, vv. 6–16 (mi-
nus vv. 12–15) are a text complete in itself, a text that chal-
lenges its addressees to commit themselves to the exclusive
worship of Yahweh, the God of the Exodus and of the giving
of the land of Israel.
What we have here is a series of five commandments
which is complete in itself. It is purely religious in nature
and does not include any ‘secular’ prohibitions. As I have
pointed out above, even the parental commandment is here
taken as a religious one, for it admonishes the younger peo-
ple among the addressees to continue their parents’ com-
mitment to orthodox Yahwism. e ‘Stage 1’ text blames the
national disaster on ‘the iniquity of the fathers’, that is,
their violation of the commandment to worship Yahweh
exclusively. Set in the first person singular as if God himself

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
14
was speaking, the passage may have been a priestly or
prophetic oracle delivered in the liturgy of a community of
exiles in Babylonia; the very expression ‘the iniquities of
the fathers’ seems to belong to the language of priestly ora-
cles (see Exod. 34:7; Num. 14:18). e ‘Stage 1’ oracle chal-
lenges the exilic addressees to detach themselves from ‘the
iniquities of the fathers’ and thereby assure their living in
post-exilic Palestine. What I have said earlier in this paper
(see above, Part 1) on the relationship between three genera-
tions—the generation of the fathers, that of the sons of
these fathers, and that of the grandchildren—can help us
understand the mentality of the pentalogue as that of a new
generation intent on distancing itself from that of the ‘fa-
thers’ and on creating a continuity with their children.

p 297 Stage 2: e Double Pentalogue or Ten Commandments

Subsequently, the purely religious nature of the earlier

text—that of Stage 1—was no longer maintained. An editor
felt that the series of five religious prohibitions and com-
mandments should be matched by an equal number of civil
commandments. Accordingly, the pentalogue was expanded
by the addition of vv. 17–21:
(6) I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
[I] (7) You shall have no other gods before me.
[II] (8) You shall not make for yourself a graven

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
15
 image, or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth;
[III] (9) you shall not bow down to them or serve
them; for I Yahweh your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate me, (10) but showing steadfast
love to thousands of those who love me and
keep my commandments.
[IV] (11) You shall not take the name of Yahweh
your God in vain: for Yahweh will not hold him
guiltless who takes his name in vain.
[V] (16a) Honour your father and your mother.
(16b) us Yahweh your God commands you
that your days may be prolonged, and that it
may go well with you, in the land which Yah-
weh your God has given you:
[VI] (17) You shall not kill.
[VII] (18) Neither shall you commit adultery.
[VIII] (19) Neither shall you steal.
[IX] (20) Neither shall you bear false witness
against your neighbour.
[X] (21) Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s
wife; and you shall not desire your neighbour’s
house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidser-
vant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your
neighbour’s.

e addition, printed here in italics, is a fine series of

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
16
five commandments or, rather, prohibitions, all of which
are phrased in the same way. Added to the five command-
ments of Stage 1, we get a double pentalogue. All of the new
commandments are short, and the overall structure is a
long religious pentalogue, followed by a short non-religious
pentalogue. e addition of ‘civil’ law to the pentalogue
repeats the general movement of the entire history of bibli-
cal law. Two basic types of law are juxtaposed and
merge—the civil law of Mesopotamian provenance and the
religious law indigenous to Israel. us the Decalogue’s dis-
tinctive blend sums up the history of law in biblical Israel
and brings it to its logical conclusion, presenting its essence
in the form of a small set of laws accompanied by p
298 explanations and exhortations (what we have termed
the pentalogue), followed by a short series of civil-law
commandments that needed no explanation. Religion
comes first, and civil law is added as a kind of a erthought;
this seems to be the implied, though not articulated mes-
sage. Or, in modern parlance, religion sustains and encom-
passes the realms of law and ethics, but cannot be reduced
to it. It makes sense to assume that at this stage the expres-
sion ‘the two tables’ was coined (v. 22). e idea that there
were two tables of the law (Deut. 4:13—‘two stone tablets’)
may reflect the form of the passage—a unity made of two
parts. is is how Josephus read the text: ‘two tables on
which were graven the ten words, five on either of
them’ (Josephus, Ant. 3.101).
Interestingly, v. 16b—‘ us Yahweh your God commands

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
17
you that your days may be prolonged, etc.’—is now used to
introduce what follows; or rather, the same words may be
read as both concluding the first series of five command-
ments (the religious pentalogue) and as introducing the
second series of five commandments (the civil pentalogue).

Stage 3: e Twelve Commandments or Dodecalogue

A subsequent editor missed a reference to the Sabbath in

the ten commandments (Stage 2), and, by inserting the long
Sabbath commandment of vv. 12–15, gave the Decalogue its
final form, the one found in our Bibles and translated above,
in Part 1.
ere can be li le doubt that in the eyes of the editor
who inserted the Sabbath commandment it was precisely
the Sabbath that ma ered most. e Sabbath command-
ment was apparently new, and so people had to be instruct-
ed in the details of its rules—hence a commandment that is
longer than any other commandment of the Decalogue. e
injunction to keep the Sabbath day now appears as the piv-
otal commandment, the one which structures the individu-
al’s life most visibly. In its wording, the Sabbath command-
ment combines language characteristic of the ‘sacerdotal’
milieu (‘Sabbath’, ‘holy’) with typically Deuteronomic
rhetoric (‘Yahweh your God’, ‘with a mighty hand and an
outstretched arm’), as if two authors with two different
schoolings had cooperated in its compilation. e inserting
editor must have been influenced by the ‘sacerdotal’ school
of exilic Israel (sixth century BCE, presumably), which, as

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
18
indicated above, did much to promote the Sabbath as a new
institution.
e addition of the Sabbath commandment upsets the
relatively balanced structure of the ‘Stage 2’ text—five reli-
gious plus five civil commandments—for now, at Stage 3,
we have six religious commandments plus p 299 five civil
ones. is imbalance was presumably solved by a different
way of counting the non-religious commandments of the
‘second table’. e tenth commandment of the ‘Stage 2’
text—the one prohibiting the appropriation of someone
else’s estate during the owner’s prolonged absence (Lang
1981)—was presumably seen as consisting of two prohibi-
tions, and so the complete, balanced text was seen as made
up of six religious and six civil commandments.
As a result, the ten commandments have become twelve
commandments. I wonder how the editor responsible for
the ‘Stage 3’ text, the one now printed in our Bibles, dealt
with the fact that Deuteronomy actually refers to the Deca-
logue as ‘the ten words’ (Deut. 4:13; 10:4). I venture the sug-
gestion that the editor, by using the divine name Yahweh
ten times in his text, tried to make up for the disappearance
of the set of ‘ten’ commandments. For him, the dodecalogue
is a text marked by ten sacred words—the tenfold reference
to Yahweh.
e passage immediately following the Deuteronomic
Decalogue is worth considering at this point:
ese words Yahweh spoke to all your assembly
at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
19
 cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice,
and he added no more. And he wrote them upon
two tables of stone, and gave them to me (Deut.
5:22).

e text of the two tablets of the law is now complete and

must not be tampered with any longer. In other words:
there were enough revisions, and there should be no more
adding to the text which now had become the Decalogue.
‘ ese words Yahweh spoke to your assembly … and he
added no more’ (v. 22). At this point, the modern interpreter
also has reason not to add any more commentary.
Nevertheless, one concluding point may be appropriate.
Is the assumption of a complicated textual development in
several stages really warranted? As a ma er of fact, in
many cases, biblical scholars seem to resort to theories of
layering too frequently and without sufficient reason. I
think that few biblical texts show signs of multiple editorial
activity or reworking; some, however, do have these
signs—and it is generally the important texts, for only
important texts were worth editing and re-editing. It is to
these important texts that the Decalogue belongs.

p 300 Bibliography

Görg, M. and B. Lang (eds.)

2001 Neues Bibel-Lexikon (3 vols.; Zürich: Benziger).
Lang, B.
1977 ‘Altersversorgung, Begräbnispflicht und

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
20
 Elterngebot’, ZDMGSup 3: 149–56.
1981 ‘Du sollst nicht nach der Frau eines anderen
verlangen: Eine neue Deutung des 9. und 10.
Gebots’, ZAW 93: 216–24.
1998 ‘ e Decalogue in the Light of a Newly Published
Palaeo-Hebrew Inscription (Hebrew Ostracon
Moussaïeff no. 1)’, JSOT 77: 21–25.
2001a ‘Sabbatgebot’, in Görg and Lang 2001: III, 391–94.
2001b ‘Zehn Gebote’, in Görg and Lang 2001: III,
1186–88.

Exum, J. Cheryl, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of
David J. A. Clines. London; New York: T&T Clark, 2003. Print.
21