How Many Commandments Are in the Bible?
Ten, 613 or two? How many commandments the Bible really contains, where the 613 of Jewish tradition come from, and how Jesus summed up the whole law in two.
Ten, 613 or two?
Ask how many commandments are in the Bible and you can get three correct answers: ten, 613 and two. Each one counts something different.
He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
Exodus 34:28
The Bible itself names the number ten. But Jewish tradition counts 613 commandments in the five books of Moses, and Jesus, asked for the greatest, named two that sum up all the rest.
The short answer: the Bible contains ten commandments in the sense of the “ten words” spoken at Sinai (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5). Jewish tradition counts 613 commandments in the whole law of Moses: 248 positive and 365 negative. Jesus summed the law up in two: love God and love your neighbor. The ten are the core of the 613, and the two are the heart of the ten. For all ten, see The Ten Commandments: What Each One Means.
Why the ten stand apart
The ten are set apart from every other law in the Bible. They are the only commandments God spoke aloud to the whole people at Sinai, the only ones written on stone “with God’s finger” (Exodus 31:18), and the only ones kept inside the ark of the covenant (Deuteronomy 10:5). In Hebrew, Moses calls them simply “the ten words” (Deuteronomy 4:13), which is where the word Decalogue comes from.
Everything else in the law came afterward, through Moses. Exodus 21–23 begins applying the ten to daily life: servants, injuries, property, courts and care for the poor. Leviticus and Deuteronomy add laws for worship, holiness, food, festivals and government. The ten are the constitution; the rest is how it was worked out for ancient Israel.
The number ten is certain; how to divide the words into ten is not. Catholics, Protestants and Jews draw the lines in different places, which is why the same commandment can be the fourth in one list and the fifth in another. Catholic vs Protestant Ten Commandments sets the three lists side by side.
The 613 commandments
The number 613 comes from the Talmud. Rabbi Simlai taught that Moses received 613 commandments: 365 negative commandments, like the days of the year, and 248 positive ones, like the parts of the body (Makkot 23b). In the twelfth century the philosopher Maimonides listed all 613 one by one in his Book of the Commandments, and his list became the standard.
The 613 cover a wide range. Some are moral, such as not taking revenge or loving the stranger. Some concern worship: sacrifices, the priesthood, the tabernacle and later the temple. Some govern daily life: food, clothing, farming, debts, the courts. Many can no longer be kept even by observant Jews, because they depend on the temple, which was destroyed in AD 70, or on living in the land of Israel.
Christians have generally sorted the same laws into three kinds: moral laws, which still apply; ceremonial laws, which pointed to Christ and were fulfilled in him; and civil laws, which governed ancient Israel as a nation. The Ten Commandments sit firmly in the first group, which is why Christians still read them. Do Christians Have to Keep the Ten Commandments? explains how different traditions understand this.
From 613 to one
The rabbis themselves did not think all 613 were equal, and they loved to compress them. A passage in the Talmud says that King David reduced the commandments to eleven (Psalm 15), Isaiah to six, Micah to three, and Habakkuk to one: “the righteous will live by his faith” (Makkot 24a). Micah’s summary is the most famous:
He has shown you, O man, what is good. What does the LORD require of you, but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8
Jesus did the same. Asked which commandment was greatest, he named two, love for God and love for neighbor, and said that “the whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:40). See What Is the Greatest Commandment?
He also warned against losing the large commandments among the small ones, rebuking religious leaders who tithed their garden herbs but “left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith” (Matthew 23:23). Counting commandments is useful; keeping the weighty ones is the point.
A new commandment
The New Testament does not add a new list to replace the ten, but it does contain one commandment Jesus called new:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just like I have loved you; you also love one another.
John 13:34
Some people call this “the eleventh commandment.” It is not new because love was absent from the law; Leviticus already said to love your neighbor. It is new because of its measure: “as I have loved you.”
So how many commandments should a Christian keep in mind? A useful way to hold the three numbers together:
- Two tell you what the whole law is for: love for God and love for neighbor.
- Ten show what that love looks like in the concrete areas of life: worship, speech, rest, family, life, marriage, property, truth and desire.
- 613 show how carefully God’s people once applied those ten to every corner of daily life.
The numbers shrink as they go deeper. The ten are easier to remember than the 613, and the two are easier to remember than the ten. None of them is easy to keep.
Questions people ask about the commandments
How many commandments are in the Bible?
The Bible names ten commandments, the “ten words” of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 (Exodus 34:28). Jewish tradition counts 613 commandments in the whole law of Moses. Jesus summarized them all in two: love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:37–40).
What are the 613 commandments?
They are all the commandments in the five books of Moses as counted by Jewish tradition: 248 positive commands and 365 prohibitions. The count comes from the Talmud (Makkot 23b), and the list most people use was compiled by Maimonides in the twelfth century.
Why are there 613 commandments?
The Talmud explains the number symbolically: 365 negative commandments for the days of the year and 248 positive ones for the parts of the human body, as if to say that every day and every part of a person belongs to God.
How many commandments did Jesus give?
Jesus named two great commandments, love for God and love for neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39), and gave one he called new: “that you love one another. Just like I have loved you” (John 13:34). He also taught many other commands in the Sermon on the Mount.
Is there an eleventh commandment?
Not in the Bible’s list, which has ten. People sometimes call Jesus’ new commandment, “love one another” as he loved us (John 13:34), the eleventh commandment, but it is a summary and deepening of the law rather than an addition to the ten.