DID THE TEN COMMANDMENTS PRECEDE
MOSES?
Most leaders of professing Christianity insist
that the core of God’s spiritual Law—the Ten
Commandments—is done away. Repeating
what they have been taught without requiring
proof, they call it the “law of Moses” and
claim that it was abolished by Jesus Christ’s
sacrifice. But they do not know the difference
between the Levitical sacrificial rituals, the
law of Moses and the law of God.
A combination of ignorance and an attempt
to minimize the Ten Commandments as
“dispensational” (obligatory for a limited
period of time) has caused most to believe
the Ten Commandments did not exist prior to
Moses receiving them on Mount Sinai. Is this
true? Is this what the Bible teaches? While
other chapters of this book will address
whether the New Testament requires
obedience to these marvelous laws, our
purpose here is to examine the period from
Creation to Moses. Keeping in mind that
scripture cannot be broken, what scriptures
can be examined for proof?
Law of Moses or God’s Law?
The Ten Commandments were never referred
to as the law of Moses, but rather the law of
God. First, understand this! The law of Moses
consisted of (1) the civil laws, which were
statutes and judgments that Moses relayed
to the people from God, recorded in Exodus
21-23 and in the remaining books of the law,
and (2) the ritualistic laws (or Greek: ergon )
that were added later, summarized in
Hebrews 9:10 . They were ordinances
regulating the job of the tribe of Levi in
temple service, sacrifices ( Leviticus 1-7 ) and
associated functions. The word ergon means
“works,” as in the “works of the law” (such as
in Galatians 2:16 ). This refers to the labor
involving the Levitical rituals that were
abolished by Christ’s sacrifice.
The Ten Commandments were already in
force long before they were officially given
to Israel at Mount Sinai and this will be
demonstrated. In fact, these commandments
have existed since the creation of man. The
Ten Commandments were never part of the
law of Moses (addressed more fully later in
the chapter) or the Levitical sacrificial
system. The civil laws and sacrifices were
based on God’s commands, which constitute
the core of His laws. Thus, the Ten
Commandments precede and transcend any
and every lesser law or practice based upon
them—statutes, judgments, precepts, and
ordinances.
The Ten Commandments are God’s spiritual
laws ( Rom. 7:12 , 14). They are just as active
as the physical laws of gravity and inertia.
Just as breaking physical laws results in
physical consequences, breaking spiritual
laws results in spiritual consequences.
Sin Defined
Most human beings either do not know of or
do not like to be reminded of I John 3:4 ,
which defines sin: “Whosoever commits sin
transgresses also the law: for sin is the
transgression of the law.” As the subject
develops, you will come to see (in stages)
the central connection between sin and the
law.
Romans 6:23 states that “the wages of sin is
death.” Romans 5 explains, “Wherefore, as
by one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin; and so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned : (For until the
law sin was in the world: but sin is not
imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless
death reigned from Adam to Moses , even
over them that had not sinned after the
similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is
the figure of Him that was to come)” ( vs.
12-14).
In other words, Adam sinned. Sin is not
imputed—does not apply—where there is no
law (carefully read Romans 4:15 ). Death
reigned from Adam to Moses. (Remember,
death is the penalty for sin, which is defined
as the transgression of the law.) The only
way that Adam and his descendants could sin
—break God’s spiritual law—is if God’s Law
already existed! Without this law in place, no
one could be guilty of sin.
Instead of rejecting sin, modern religionists
reject the law. They view the law as a burden
—they want to be free from keeping it. But
notice the key lessons found in Romans 7:7 :
“What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God
forbid. No, I had not known sin, but by the
law: for I had not known lust, except the law
had said, You shall not covet.” It is not the
law that is at fault—and Paul is clearly citing
one of the Ten Commandments—but sin. God
reveals to us what sin is. He does this by His
perfect law. On his own, man cannot discover
God’s perfect law. God has to reveal and
teach it to us.
Man’s First Sin
In the Garden of Eden, God talked to Adam
and gave him clear, understandable
instructions. Adam needed this. He was an
adult with an adult mind, but God had to
reveal to him the spiritual boundaries that
Adam could not discover on his own, without
breaking God’s laws. Genesis 2:15 states,
“And the Lord God took the man, and put
him into the garden of Eden to dress it and
to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you
may freely eat: but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat
of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you
shall surely die.”
Adam was given instructions on how to
maintain the garden. He was also
commanded not to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil (not to decide
for himself what is right or wrong), and was
told exactly what the penalty would be for
disobeying this command. In effect, he was
presented with what would be the same
penalty described in the New Testament: “the
wages of sin is death” ( Rom. 6:23 ).
God revealed to Adam, and to his wife, Eve,
right knowledge about how to live. But He
gave them the freedom to decide whether or
not they would follow His way. This was free
moral agency, which God has given to all
mankind.
Satan, in the form of a serpent, told Eve that
if she took the fruit of the forbidden tree,
“You shall not surely die: for God does know
that in the day you eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as
gods, knowing good and evil” ( Gen. 3:4-5 ).
Being gullible in the face of Satan’s shrewd
tactics, Eve fell for his deception and ate
from the tree, as did Adam.
Adam sinned by acting against God’s
command. He broke God’s Law. In doing so,
he became the servant of the one whom he
obeyed—Satan. This principle is explained in
Romans 6:16 : “Know you not, that to whom
you yield yourselves servants to obey, his
servants you are to whom you obey; whether
of sin unto death, or of obedience unto
righteousness?”
Whoever or whatever someone obeys and
serves is his god. In this case, Adam and Eve
broke the First Commandment by putting
another god before the Creator God . In doing
so, they also broke the Fifth Commandment,
by dishonoring their Parent , in the sense that
Adam was a created son of God (Luke 3:38 ).
Their sin also involved stealing (the Eighth
Commandment), in that they took something
that was not theirs. Besides this, Eve lusted
for the forbidden fruit. Lusting is coveting,
which breaks the Tenth Commandment.
Breaking one commandment leads to
breaking all of them. This is precisely what
the apostle James expressed in James 2:10 :
“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and
yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”
God’s laws are interrelated and intricately
woven together—if you break one, you
eventually break them all. Sin always spreads.
In Genesis 4 , Adam’s first son, Cain, became
angry against his brother Abel, because God
accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but not Cain’s.
Notice how God admonished Cain in verses
6-7 : “And the Lord said unto Cain, Why are
you wroth [angry]? and why is your
countenance fallen? If you do well, shall you
not be accepted? and if you do not well, sin
[impossible without the Law] lies at the door.
And unto you shall be his desire, and you
shall rule over him.” Cain murdered and
broke the Sixth Commandment.
When someone is in the wrong frame of
mind, sin does lie at the door, waiting to
happen, because sinful thoughts lead to
sinful actions. God commands us to rule over
sin—to control those pulls and impulses to
commit sin. Cain murdered Abel and lied to
God about it. This is a direct violation of the
Ninth Commandment, which forbids “bearing
false witness against your neighbor.” Cain
had sinned and he knew it. This happened a
few decades after Adam had first sinned.
Adam and Eve’s expanding family knew that
sin was the breaking of God’s Law, or God
would not have held them accountable.
Other Commandments in Force Before
Sinai
The Bible gives examples of each of the Ten
Commandments being kept before Moses’
time. When God called Jacob to return to
Bethel, where God had appeared to him
approximately 21 years before, Jacob warned
his people, “Put away the strange gods that
are among you , and be clean, and change
your garments: and let us arise, and go up to
Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto
God, who answered me in the day of my
distress, and was with me in the way which I
went” (Gen. 35:2-3 ). Jacob knew that God
forbade idolatry—breaking the Second
Commandment. By telling his household to
put away their idols,

this fulfilled the principle in Proverbs 16:6 , “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.” When Abram told King Abimelech that Sarah, his half sister and wife, was merely his sister, he lied—another breaking of the Ninth Commandment. Believing this, Abimelech sent for Sarah. Now notice Genesis 20:3-4 , 6: “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, you are but a dead man, for the woman which you have taken; for she is a man’s wife. But Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, Lord, will you slay also a righteous nation?…And God said unto him in a dream, Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart; for I also withheld you from sinning against Me: therefore suffered I you not to touch her.” In this situation, Abimelech would have committed adultery, which is a sin. He would have broken the Seventh Commandment. When Joseph was tempted by the advances of Potiphar’s wife, he “…refused, and said unto his master’s wife, Behold, my master knows not what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand; There is none greater in this house than I; neither has he kept back any thing from me but you, because you are his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God ?” (Gen. 39:8-9 ). Joseph was well aware that adultery was sin. This occurred about 250 years before the law was officially presented to Israel at Mount Sinai! The Lesson of Manna During their march to the Promised Land, God told the Israelites to gather their daily amount of manna each morning. On the morning before the weekly Sabbath there would be enough for both days. This was because no manna would appear on the Sabbath, God’s day of rest. God intended that the Israelites rest on the Sabbath, rather than spend time gathering manna. This account is given in Exodus 16. In verse 28, after some of the people deliberately broke the Sabbath by attempting to gather manna, God told Moses, “How long refuse you [Israel] to keep My commandments and My laws?” Now notice verses 29-30: “See, for that the Lord has given you the Sabbath, therefore He gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide you every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day.” So, the Fourth Commandment was in effect before the Law was given at Mount Sinai. By the time Israel entered the land of Canaan, the nations there had “run the full course”—they had surpassed the threshold of moral collapse, much like nations have done today. God knew that this would happen and had told Abram about it, over 400 years earlier: “And you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they [Abram’s seed—the nation Israel] shall come here again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:15-16 ). Here, the word “iniquity” comes from the Hebrew word avon, which means “perversity, mischief or sin.” If there had been no law in force, there would not have been any iniquity or sin for the Amorites, or any other nation, to commit. Refer to Leviticus 18:3 , 19-30 for more description of the iniquity and abominations committed by the Canaanites. They included sacrificing—murdering—their children in the fire of the false god Molech, every form of adultery and sexual perversity, and profaning the name of God, among other sins. Take a look at the pre-Flood world: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” ( Gen. 6:1-3 , 5-6 ). The word “wickedness” used here comes from the Hebrew word rah , which means “exceedingly evil.” So wicked was mankind that verse 6 tells us, “And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.” This wickedness brought every conceivable type of sin and blatant disregard for the sanctity of life. These sins were imputed—pointed out—by the laws of God—the Ten Commandments, which existed from the creation of mankind. These examples show that all the Ten Commandments preceded Moses. From Adam to Moses, all men had sinned—had broken God’s laws, the Ten Commandments. That is why God commended Abraham, saying, “Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws” ( Gen. 26:5 ).