The Three Shekels Receipt and the Fourth Commandment

The “Three Shekels” inscription from the Shlomo Moussaieff Collection in London, published in BAR,^a may change the way we punctuate—and therefore the way we understand—some of the Ten Commandments. I do not suggest the change is a major one, but it is highly interesting nonetheless.

The Ten Commandments appear twice in the Bible, once in Exodus and again in Deuteronomy. But they are not identical. The phrase “as the Lord your God commanded you” (Deuteronomy 5:12, 16) appears twice in Deuteronomy. This phrase is omitted from the parallel passages in Exodus (Exodus 20:8, 12) because in Exodus the Lord is speaking. In Deuteronomy, a second telling of Biblical events, Moses recounts to the people what God had said at Sinai as they are about to enter the Promised Land.

But it is unclear whether the phrase in Deuteronomy, “as the Lord your God commanded,” refers to the commandment just given or to the material that follows.

The first appearance of the phrase in the Deuteronomic decalogue is in the Fourth Commandment. The problem is how to punctuate it: