Select one of the following for a printable version of the Ten Commandments from the King James Version Bible. These documents are designed to be printed as a full A4 size printout that you can frame or just hang as a poster somewhere. Printing these posters on glossy white paper gives a very professional finish. The last two can be used as post cards.

Note that KJV uses the word “shewing” in the second commandment and that this is not an error and is true to the original translation. Some supposed Christians have also sent hateful emails condemning me because the King James Version uses the words “Thou Shalt not kill” when they felt that “Thou shalt not murder” was more correct. I am not responsible for the words used by the translators of the most accurate translation available so please do not attack me for the words they used which technically are not incorrect anyway.

Below is a comparison of both readings of the Ten Commandments. The first as personally spoken and written by the finger of God and is found in Exodus 20:2-17 and the second which was written down and spoken by Moses and is found in Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Deuteronomy literally means “second law,” and is the last of the five books (the Pentateuch or Torah). Both books are given from the King James Bible in modern English.

The Jews call these first five books “Torah” which means “teaching,” “instruction,” or “law”. It is also called the Law of Moses (Torat Moshe). Torah however, can mean different things in different contexts. Torah primarily refers to the first section of the Tanakh which is an acronym that identifies the Hebrew Bible and is based on the initial Hebrew letters of each of the text's three parts. The first five books of the Tanakh or books of Moses are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The word Torah can also be used to refer to the entire Jewish bible which to non-Jews is called the Old Testament. To the Jews there is no Old Testament. The books that Christians call the New Testament are not part of Jewish scripture, so what Christians call the Old Testament is known to the Jews as Written Torah or the Tanakh.

This is a list of the books of Written Torah, in the order in which they appear in Jewish translations. The Hebrew names of the first five books are derived from the first few words of the book. The text of each book is fairly similar in Jewish translations as what you see in Christian bibles, although there are some occasional slight differences in the numbering of verses and there are some significant differences in the translations.

Torah (The Law):
Bereishith (In the beginning...) - Genesis
Shemoth (The names...) - Exodus
Vayiqra (And He called...) - Leviticus
Bamidbar (In the wilderness...) - Numbers
Devarim (The words...) - Deuteronomy

For the Jews, the Ten Commandments are a special set of spiritual laws that the LORD Himself wrote on two stone tablets (luchot) that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. In the Scriptures these laws are called the “aseret hadevarim,” the “ten words” or “ten utterances”. In rabbinical writings, they are usually referred to as “Aseret haDiberot,” and in Christian theological writings they are called the Decalogue which is derived from the Greek name “dekalogos” (ten statements) found in the Septuagint (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 10:4), which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew name.

To the Jews the Torah has a total of 613 commandments which includes the ten from the Decalogue. Traditional Rabbinical Jewish belief is that these commandments apply solely to the Jewish people. Many of these laws were instituted because of sin (example Passover) and hence were in fact only for the Jews because the Gospel did not go to the Gentiles until after the sacrificial law ended at the cross. But the Ten Commandments of course are very much a standalone law for all mankind. They were written by the finger of God, personally spoken by God and were stored in the inside of the Ark of the Covenant under the mercy seat, which represented the very presence of God. Clearly the Ten Commandments are extremely important to God. Most of these other laws have now ended but not so with the Ten Commandments. Some examples of the other laws were unclean (unhealthy) foods, laws to prevent the spread of leprosy, mold in houses or a woman being unclean once a month. Lately I have begun to see attempts to diminish the importance of the Ten Commandments by saying there are 613 laws. But it is obviously not wisdom to compare laws to stop the spread of disease for example to the Ten Commandments that God wrote in stone!