Ten Commandments verse, is used for public Torah reading, while the "ta'am tachton" (lower accentuation), which divides the text into verses of more even length, is used for private reading or study. The verse numbering in Jewish Bibles follows the "ta'am tachton". In Jewish Bibles the references to the Ten Commandments are therefore and . The Samaritan Pentateuch varies in the Ten Commandments passages, both in that the Samaritan Deuteronomical version of the passage is much closer to that in Exodus, and in that Samaritans count as nine commandments what others count as ten. The Samaritan tenth commandment is on the sanctity
Ten Commandments laws and treaties, but is divided over exactly when the Ten Commandments were written and who wrote them. In biblical Hebrew, the Ten Commandments are called (transliterated ) and in Mishnaic Hebrew (transliterated ), both translatable as "the ten words", "the ten sayings", or "the ten matters". The Tyndale and Coverdale English biblical translations used "ten verses". The Geneva Bible used "tenne commandements", which was followed by the Bishops' Bible and the Authorized Version (the "King James" version) as "ten commandments". Most major English versions use "commandments." The English name "Decalogue" is derived from Greek , "dekalogos", the latter meaning