Exodus 20:1-17

Contemporary English Version

The Ten Commandments

(Deuteronomy 5.1-21)

20 God said to the people of Israel:

² I am the Lord your God, the one who brought you out of Egypt where you were slaves.

³ Do not worship any god except me.

^4 (A) Do not make idols that look like anything in the sky or on earth or in the ocean under the earth. ^5 (B) Don't bow down and worship idols. I am the Lord your God, and I demand all your love. If you reject me, I will punish your families for three or four generations. ⁶ But if you love me and obey my laws, I will be kind to your families for thousands of generations.

^7 (C) Do not misuse my name.^[a] I am the Lord your God, and I will punish anyone who misuses my name.

^8 (D) Remember that the Sabbath Day belongs to me. ^9 (E) You have six days when you can do your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day of each week belongs to me, your God. No one is to work on that day—not you, your children, your slaves, your animals, or the foreigners who live in your towns. ^11 (F) In six days I made the sky, the earth, the oceans, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That's why I made the Sabbath a special day that belongs to me.

^12 (G) Respect your father and your mother, and you will live a long time in the land I am giving you.

^13 (H) Do not murder.

^14 (I) Be faithful in marriage.

^15 (J) Do not steal.

^16 (K) Do not tell lies about others.

^17 (L) Do not desire to possess anything that belongs to another person—not a house, a wife, a husband, a slave, an ox, a donkey, or anything else.