Answer
The biblical Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20:1–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21, are as follows:
(1) “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2–3; cf. Deuteronomy 5:6–7).
(2) “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:4–6; cf. Deuteronomy 5:8–10).
(3) “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7, ESV; cf. Deuteronomy 5:11).
(4) “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:8–11, ESV; cf. Deuteronomy 5:12–15).
(5) “Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12; cf. Deuteronomy 5:16).
(6) “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13; cf. Deuteronomy 5:17).
(7) “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14; cf. Deuteronomy 5:18).
(8) “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15; cf. Deuteronomy 5:19).
(9) “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16, ESV; cf. Deuteronomy 5:20).
(10) “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17; cf. Deuteronomy 5:21).
In the Catholic Catechism and most official Catholic documents, the first and second commandments are combined to read, “I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange gods before me” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., United States Conference of Catholic Bishops—Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994, p. 496). To get the number of commandments back to ten, the tenth commandment is then split in two: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” and “You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” (ibid., p. 497).
It is not necessarily wrong for the Catholic Church to combine the first and second commandments and split the tenth commandment into two commandments. After all, the numerals 1—10 do not appear in any ancient Hebrew manuscripts that contain the Ten Commandments. Technically, the second commandment contains two commandments: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image” and “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” Further, the tenth commandment contains seven different, but related, prohibitions.
It is curious that the Roman Catholic Church would condense the second commandment as “You shall not have strange gods before me” and not mention in its summaries the carved images or the prohibition against bowing down to them. The charge of idolatry is often leveled against the Catholic Church for its use of images and iconography. It would seem that omitting the “graven image” and the “bow down” clauses from shortened forms of the catechism would invite continued criticism.
Longer forms of the official catechism do address the “graven image” clause but also defend the use of images in the church. For example, the Catholic commentary on the first commandment says, “The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed, ‘the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype,’ and ‘whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it.’ The honor paid to sacred images is a ‘respectful veneration,’ not the adoration due to God alone: Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. [T]he movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Citta del Vaticano, 1993, Part 3, § 2, ch. 1, art. 1.IV, ¶ 2132).
The ancient Israelites struggled greatly with the sin of idolatry, and to this day people are tempted to turn their attention to things made with human hands. The first two commandments are clear and explicit that our worship is to be directed to God alone without the use of images “in the form of anything” (Exodus 20:4). Being circumspect in this matter seems to be the biblically prudent choice.
