IV. The number ten was, we can hardly doubt, itself significant to Moses and the Israelites. The received symbol, then and at all times, of completeness (Biihr, Symbolik, i, 175-183), it taught the people that the law of Jehovah was perfect (Psa. xix, 7). The fact that they were written not on one, but on two tables, proba- bly in two groups of five each {infra), taught men (though with some variations from the classification of later ethics) the great division of duties towards (iod and duties towards our neighbor, which we recognise as the groundwork of every true nnoral system. It taught them also, five being the sj-mbol of imperfection (Biihr, i, 183-187), how incomplete each set of duties would be when divorced from its comjianion. The recurrence of these numbers in the Pentateuch is at once frequent and striking. Ewald (Gesch. Isr, ii, 212-217) has shown by a large induction how continually laws and precepts meet us in groups of five or ten. The numbers, it will be remembered, meet us again as the basis of all the pro-
X.-S
portions of the tabernacle (q. v.) and temple. It would show an ignorance of all modes of Hebrew thought to exclude this symbolic as])ect. We need not, however, shut out altogether that which some writers (e. g. Gro- tius, De Decal. p. 3(5) have substituted for it, the connec- tion of the ten words with a decimal system of numera- tion through the ten fingers on which a man counts. Words which were to be the ride of life for the ]ioor as well as the learned, the groundwork of education for all children, might well be coiniected with the sini|)lest facts and processes in man's mental growth, and thus stamped more indelibly on the memory. Biihr, ab- sorbed in symbolism, has nothing for this natural sug- gestion but two notes of admiration (! !). The analogy of ten great commandincnts in the moral law of Bud- dhism might have shown him how naturally men crave a number that thus helps them. A true system was as little likely to ignore the natural craving as a false (see note in Ewald, Gesch. Isr. ii, 207). See Tkn.
V. Tables. — In what way the ten commandments were to be divided has, however, been a matter of much controversy. At least four distinct arrangements pre- sent themselves.
1. In the received teaching of the Latin Church rest- ing on that of Augustine ((^«.in yi>.71; Kp.adJunuar. c. 11; De Decal. etc.), the first table contained three commandments, the second the other seven. Partly on iTi3'stical grounds, because the tables thus symbolized the trinity of divine persons and the eternal Sabbath, partly as seeing in it a true ethical division, he adopted this classification. It inv<ilved, however, and in part proceeded from, an alteration in the received arrange- ment. What we know as the first and second were united, and consequently the Sabbath law appeared at the close of the first table as the third, not as the fourth, commandment. The completeness of the lumTber was restored in the second table by making a separate (the ninth) command of the precept, "I'hou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," which with us forms part of the tenth. It is an almost fatal objection to this order that in the first table it confounds, where it ought to dis- tinguish, the two sins of polytheism and idolatry; and that in the second it introduces an arbitrar}' and mean- ingless distinction. The later theology of the Church of Rome apparently adopted it as seeming to prohibit image- worship only so far as it accompanied the ac- knowledgment of another God (Cafech. Trident, in. "2, W).
2. The familiar division — referring the first four to our duty towards God, and the six remaining to our duty towards man — is, on ethical grounds, simi)le and natural enough. If it is not altogether satisfying, it is because it fails to recognise the symmetry which gives to the number five so great a prominence; and perhaps, also, because it looks on the duty of the fifth command- ment from the point of vievv of modern ethics rather than from that of the ancient Israelites and the first disciples of Christ (infra).
3. A modification of 1 has been adopted by later Jew- ish writers (Jonathan ben-Uzziel, Aben-Ezra, Moses ben- Nachman, in Suicer, Thesaur. s. v. AtKuXoyoQ). Ketain- ing the combination of the first and second command- ments of the common order, they have made a new " word" of the opening declaration, "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage," and so have avoided the ne- cessity of the subdivision of the tenth. The objection to this division is (1), that it rests on no adequate au- thority, and (2) that it turns into a single precept what is evidently given as the groundwork of the whole body of laws.
4. Rejecting these three, there remains that recog- nised by the older Jewish writers — Josephus {Ant. in, 6, 6) and Philo {De Decal. i), and supported ably and thoughtfully by Ewald {Gesch. Isr. ii, 208), which places five commandments in each table, and thus preserves the pentad and decad grouping which pervades the whole code. A modern jurist would perhaps object that