Which Ten Commandments?

You think you know the real Ten Commandments? "Love Thy Mother and Father," and "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife?"

Well think again. According to Exodus, the real 10 Commandments are:

1. Behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
   
   Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
2. For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name [is] Jealous, [is] a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and [one] call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
3. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
4. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
5. All that openeth the matrix [is] mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, [whether] ox or sheep, [that is male]. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem [him] not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
6. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
7. And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord GOD, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.
8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
9. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

(Exodus 34:11-26 emphasis mine.)

See, what happened was, Moses went up to Mount Sinai and God told him the traditional Ten Commandments as well as dozens of other commandments. Moses then passed them on to the Israelites. The Israelites were happy with the laws and obeyed them. Then God told Moses to come to the top of Mount Sinai and He would carve some laws onto stone tablets. Moses was on the mountain for 40 days. God engraved ten commandments into two tablets. Moses brought down the tablets on the 41st day, and saw the Israelites worshipping a statue of a calf. Moses was so angry that the people couldn't keep the laws of God that he broke the tablets. Then God engraved two more tablets with the same ten commandments as the first set (Exodus 34:1 and Deuteronomy 10:4). What these commandments were, exactly, is in question. In Exodus these commandments are the ones I have listed above (Exodus 34:27-28). In Deuteronomy, they are the traditional Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:22).

So, all this hype of the need to post the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses and in our schools is ridiculous. The real covenant of God may be a totally different set of rules, most of which Christians and Jews don't know about, let alone follow (all except not worshipping any other gods).

Incidentally, the traditional Ten Commandments are followed by tens of other commandments. Don't forget commandment 16 or so: "And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do (Exodus 21:7)." And certainly don't forget commandments 40 and 42 or so: "The firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me (Exodus 22:29)." And "And ye shall be holy men unto me: neither shall ye eat [any] flesh [that is] torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs (Exodus 22:31)."

This is not to mention that it is plain that the Constitution says, "The Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise [of an establishment of religion]" and the Commandment that says you shall worship no other gods prevents the exercise of Hinduism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Native American religions, etc. Now the laws on the statues of the Ten Commandments are not actual laws, however, they are endorsements of these laws by public institutions.