Division of the Decalogue.
By J. H. W.
SEVERAL correspondents have made inquiries about the division of the commandments; calling attention to the fact that the first and second of the common version are but one in the Hebrew. There is an apparent difficulty in this. I was for some time sorely perplexed over the charge made against the Romanists by Alexander Campbell in his debate with Bishop Purcell, knowing that Mr. Campbell must have known of the division in the Hebrew text, to which the division in the Douay Bible corresponds. But he was doubtless correct, as the present division of the Hebrew does not appear to be the ancient one. Prof. Green, of Princeton College, says:— “The sections of the Masoretic text were doubtless intended to distinguish the several commandments, though it is remarkable that the division thus indicated agrees neither with that of the ancient Jews represented by Josephus and Philo, nor with that which prevails among the modern Jews. The former, like the majority of the Christian fathers and the Reformed Churches of the present day, regarded the prohibition of idolatry, ver. 3, as the first commandment, that of image-worship, vs. 4–6, the second, and under the tenth they included the whole of ver. 17. The latter find the first commandment in ver. 2, though it has not the form of a command, combine the prohibition of idolatry and image-worship, vs. 3–6, as the second, and include the whole of ver. 17 in the trary, agree with the division of Augustine, which after him became current in the Latin church, and was retained likewise by Luther. According to this the first commandment, vs. 2–6, prohibits both idolatry and image-worship, no distinction being made between offences against the unity of God and against his spirituality; and two commandments are devoted to the sin of coveting, ver. 17, though this is attended with the inconvenience of creating a distinction in things fundamentally identical, and is moreover precluded by a variation in the order of the clauses in Deut. 5, where the decalogue is repeated.” The decalogue is double accented, one system “having relation to its division into verses, and the other, into commandments.” Green says: “In verse 17 there is but a single series of accents, its first clause having no separate accentuation to distinguish it as a complete commandment; the samech [sign of division] in this verse is also omitted in many MSS., and in a few printed editions.”