The Ten Commandments

The "Ten Commandments" or "Ten Utterances" are the group of the commandments given to the Israelites at Mount Sinai in a constitutive moment of divine revelation to all of the children of Israel. The first set of five commandments establish the rules of God's relationship with humanity, and the second set of five are between people and other people. The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Torah: first, when they are given at Sinai, in Exodus 20 and again in Deuteronomy 5, in Moses' retelling of the earlier narrative.