Is there a "two tables" division in the Ten Commandments?
You may have heard the terms “first table of the law” and “second table of the law.” There are two ways that people might understand the phrase "two tables": literal and symbolic.
Literal tables
Scripture affirms that there were two literal stone tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written. But there are a couple of ways to understand how they were written. Some people teach that the Ten Commandments were spread out across the two tablets of stone, such that the first four (or five) were written on one, and the last six (or five) on the other. There is no Biblical basis to claim this as dogmatically true, and it might actually be false.
On the other hand, many scholars suggest that the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments functioned as covenant treaty tokens. If this is true, then each tablet contained a full copy of the commandments.
Even if it were true that the commandments were spread out between the tablets, we would have no way of knowing which ones were divided onto each tablet.
Symbolic tables?
More often you will hear Christian teachers make a symbolic distinction between the “first” and “second” table commandments. However, every commentator that makes this distinction fails to justify it. Where would you like to divide the tables? Between the 3rd and 4th commandment? How about between the 4th and 5th commandment? What about 5th and 6th? Take your pick:
As mentioned above, the Augustinian division of the commandments saw three in the first table and seven in the second, whilst that enumerated by Origen and Jerome and adopted by Reformed Protestants saw the first and second tables comprised of four and six commandments respectively. A third tradition, dating back to Philo of Alexandria, which was occasionally mentioned but gained no traction in early modern commentaries, classified the Fifth Commandment to honour father and mother as a religious rather than a social obligation, rendering the two tables equal at five precepts apiece.[1]
Let's look at an early example, the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), in the section on the Ten Commandments:
Q&A 93
Q. How are these commandments divided?
A. Into two tables. The first has four commandments, teaching us how we ought to live in relation to God. The second has six commandments, teaching us what we owe our neighbor.[2]
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) agrees:
This law ... was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables: the first four commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six, our duty to man.[3]
This statement by the Westminster Assembly was also copied by the London Baptist Confession (1689), and this erroneous division in the law is still being affirmed by confessional Christians.
What's wrong with it? Let's look at the actual Fourth Commandment (which is numbered as the “Third” by Lutherans and Roman Catholics):
12 “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as YHWH your God commanded you. 13 You shall labor six days, and do all your work; 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHWH your God, in which you shall not do any work— neither you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your livestock, nor your stranger who is within your gates; that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and YHWH your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore YHWH your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Deuteronomy 5:12-15WEB
Notice all the neighbors mentioned in this commandment? How can any Christian possibly assert that the Sabbath commandment does not include a "duty to man"?
Insofar as a man has authority over his children or any servants (which includes employees!), this command specifically forbids him from using his authority to make them work on the day of rest (whatever day you happen to think that is). The Fourth Commandment involves loving your neighbor just as much as loving God. Therefore, it is false (and also unnecessary) to divide it away from the (so-called) “second table.”
The phrase “you shall remember that you were a servant” is critical to understanding the Sabbath. This is because there is not just one (weekly) Sabbath rest, but several Sabbath “rests” are commanded in scripture. These include a release from debt repayment (Deut. 15:2), a “rest” for the land (Lev. 25:3-5) -- which includes allowing the poor, widows, and foreigners to gather from it (Ex. 23:10-12) -- , and “rest” from servitude (Deut. 15:12-15). All of these laws relate to God's opposition to slavery, the condition that he saved his people from. If only Christian teachers had paid more attention to these aspects of the Sabbath, Christians might have corrected (or even prevented) many of the historical injustices around the issue of slavery.
Some theologians have erred even further when dividing the Ten Commandments. For example, here is the well-known Church historian Philip Schaff, writing in 1877:
The Decalogue consists of two tables, of five commandments each. The first contains the duties to God (praecepta pietatis), the second the duties to man (praecepta probitatis). The first is strictly religious, the second moral. The fifth commandment belongs to the first table, since it enjoins reverence to parents as representing God's authority on earth. This view is now taken not only by Reformed, but also by many of the ablest Lutheran divines...[4]
This is a clear case of "wrongly dividing the word of truth.” According to Schaff, the first five commandments are "strictly religious," versus the latter five which are "moral." Can a false distinction be any more obvious than this? Do your parents count as neighbors? Is disobedience to your parents not a moral issue? Are idolatry and blasphemy not moral issues?
The "two tables" distinction is not based in scripture. Even if it were necessary to segregate God's commandments this way (and it isn't), there is no way to do so consistently. God's commandments/laws often have multiple purposes. A simplistic division between "first table" and "second table" ignores the complexity of God's purpose.
Elevating the Ten Commandments above the rest of the law
Throughout history, Christian teachers have often given the Ten Commandments a special status over the rest of God's law. In one (limited) sense, the Ten Commandments do function as a kind of "executive summary" of God's law. Many of the individual apodictic and case laws are meaningfully symbolized by one of the commandments. There is a sense in which all of the various laws that have to do with Sabbath observance are summarized by the sentence "remember the Sabbath". All of the various laws that warn about idolatry (and prescribe civil punishments for idolaters) are summed up in the commandments against graven images and have other Gods before YHWH.
But even if the Ten Commandments summarize and (in some sense) represent the whole of God's law, they can never substitute for the details of the whole law. In fact, we cannot even understand the Ten Commandments without understanding the details of the rest of the law. "You shall not kill" means what, exactly? Are you never allowed to kill anyone? Even in self-defense? That's not what God's law says. But you wouldn't know that if you hadn't already studied the details of the law. You wouldn't know what "unlawful killing" is. You wouldn't know what "lawful killing" is.
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