<P> The mount was covered by the cloud for six days, and on the seventh day Moses went into the midst of the cloud and was "in the mount forty days and forty nights ." And Moses said, "the LORD delivered unto me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God; and on them was written according to all the words, which the LORD spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly ." Before the full forty days expired, the children of Israel collectively decided that something had happened to Moses, and compelled Aaron to fashion a golden calf, and he "built an altar before it" and the people "worshipped" the calf . </P> <P> After the full forty days, Moses and Joshua came down from the mountain with the tablets of stone: "And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount ." After the events in chapters 32 and 33, the LORD told Moses, "Hew thee two tablets of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tablets the words that were in the first tablets, which thou brakest ." "And he wrote on the tablets, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly: and the LORD gave them unto me ." </P> <P> According to Jewish tradition, Exodus 20: 1--17 constitutes God's first recitation and inscription of the ten commandments on the two tablets, which Moses broke in anger with his rebellious nation, and were later rewritten on replacement stones and placed in the ark of the covenant; and Deuteronomy 5: 4--25 consists of God's re-telling of the Ten Commandments to the younger generation who were to enter the Promised Land . The passages in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 contain more than ten imperative statements, totalling 14 or 15 in all . </P> <P> Different religious traditions divide the seventeen verses of Exodus 20: 1--17 and their parallels at Deuteronomy 5: 4--21 into ten "commandments" or "sayings" in different ways, shown in the table below . Some suggest that the number ten is a choice to aid memorization rather than a matter of theology . </P>

Where do the ten commandments first appear in the bible