One Covenant, Given to One People
"The Law" translates the Hebrew torah (תּוֹרָה | tôrāh | ), which means instruction or teaching — not "rules" in the narrow sense. Jewish tradition counts 613 commandments in it (the Talmud, Makkot 23b: 365 prohibitions and 248 positive commands). They were given through Moses at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19–24) as the terms of a covenant.
The first thing to say plainly, because it is the most often missed: this Law was given to Israel, not to humanity. It is the national covenant of the people brought out of Egypt — "Hear, O Israel" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Gentiles were never placed under it. A resident foreigner (ger) living in Israel kept some of it; and Jewish tradition held that all people were bound only by the older, simpler commands given to Noah (Genesis 9). But the 613 belonged to Israel.
The second thing, an honesty note: the familiar sorting of the Law into moral, civil, and ceremonial is a later Christian framework — articulated by Aquinas and hardened in Reformed confessions — not a division the Torah itself makes. To Israel it was one Law, one covenant, undivided. The categories below are a useful lens laid over the text, not a seam found inside it. Use them as a guide, not as gospel.
Who carried and kept it
Every Israelite was bound to the covenant, but specific offices guarded it. Moses was its mediator — he received the Law on Sinai and spoke it to the people, the only one said to meet God "face to face" (Exodus 33:11); he was lawgiver and prophet, never priest. The priesthood ran through Aaron and his sons, who alone offered sacrifice and entered the sanctuary, the high priest alone passing into the Most Holy Place once a year. The wider tribe of Levi — the Levites — handled everything else around the sanctuary and, crucially, taught the Law to the people (Deuteronomy 33:10; Malachi 2:7); they received no land, living instead on tithes in 48 Levitical cities. Kings were ordered to copy out and read the Law (Deuteronomy 17:18–20); prophets prosecuted the covenant when Israel broke it; judges and elders tried cases; and by Jesus' day the scribes and Pharisees were its professional interpreters.
The covenant came on two stone tablets "written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18). Coming down Sinai to find the golden calf, Moses smashed them at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:19) — shattering the covenant document over a covenant Israel had already broken. The second set was different: Moses cut the stones himself and God re-wrote them (Exodus 34:1). And tradition (Talmud, Bava Batra 14b) holds that both sets — the whole and the broken — were kept together in the Ark.
Christ's caveat
Jesus stated his own relationship to the Law directly: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17). The word is plērōsai — to fill full, to bring to its goal — not to cancel. Working that out, the New Testament treats the sacrificial and priestly system as completed in him (Hebrews 7–10 calls the old order "obsolete," 8:13), declares the food laws lifted (Mark 7:19; Acts 10), and rules that Gentile believers need not keep the Mosaic Law or be circumcised (the Jerusalem Council, Acts 15). The moral core it carries forward and deepens, compressed by Jesus into loving God and neighbor (Matthew 22:37–40). On exactly how much continues, Christian traditions still differ — so the status labels on the cards below report what the New Testament texts say, and flag the Sabbath, where the disagreement is sharpest.
Filter by type, then click a card to open who it bound, who kept it, and what became of it.
Worship the LORD alone; acknowledge no rival deity.
Make no carved image of God or other gods to bow down to.
Do not use the name of the LORD wrongfully or emptily.
Rest on the seventh day; do no work, and let your household rest too.
Give weight and respect to one's parents.
Do not unlawfully take a human life.
Do not violate the marriage bond.
Do not take what belongs to another.
Do not lie about another, especially in court.
Do not crave what belongs to your neighbor.
Love the LORD with all you are; love your neighbor as yourself.
One who harms another's person or property repays, sometimes severalfold.
No one is convicted on the testimony of a single witness.
A king must write his own copy of the Law, read it daily, and not amass wealth, horses, or wives.
Six cities where one who killed accidentally could flee from the avenger of blood and receive trial.
Every seventh year the land rests and debts are released; every fiftieth, property returns and slaves go free.
Do not harvest the edges of your field or pick it clean; leave it for the poor and the foreigner.
Limits on bond-service: release in the seventh year, protection of those who flee, prohibition of returning an escaped slave.
Use true measures; show no partiality in judgment; take no bribe.
Animal and grain offerings for worship, thanksgiving, and atonement for sin.
Only Aaron's descendants could serve at the altar and mediate between God and Israel.
Once a year the high priest cleansed the sanctuary and the nation; one goat was sacrificed, one sent away bearing sin.
Passover, Weeks (Pentecost), Booths, and the rest — Israel's sacred calendar of remembrance.
Rules dividing animals that may be eaten from those that may not (the dietary, "kosher," laws).
States of ritual purity governing who could approach worship — childbirth, disease, contact with death.
Every male circumcised on the eighth day as the sign of the covenant — a command older than Sinai.
A tenth of the land's produce given to support the Levites, who had no inheritance of their own.
Plain, literal definitions — what the words mean in the source languages, before any one tradition's theology.
תּוֹרָה · tôrāh · / νόμος · nomos ·
Instruction, teaching, direction. Not merely "rules," but the whole guidance God gave Israel for living in covenant with him.
חָטָא · ḥāṭāʾ · / ἁμαρτία · hamartia ·
Literally, to miss the mark — as an archer misses a target. The word carries the sense of falling short of, or transgressing, what is required.
חֵן · ḥēn · / χάρις · charis ·
Favor, kindness, a gift freely given. In Christian usage it sharpens to unmerited favor — kindness shown to one who has not earned it.
חֶסֶד · ḥesed · / ἔλεος · eleos ·
Ḥesed is steadfast love, loyal kindness — the covenant faithfulness God shows his people. Eleos is compassion shown to one in need or in the wrong.
רַע · raʿ · / πονηρός · ponēros ·
A wide word. Raʿ can mean moral wickedness, but also disaster, calamity, harm, or simply "bad" — which is why the same term covers both wrongdoing and misfortune.
בְּרִית · bᵉrît · / διαθήκη · diathēkē ·
A binding agreement between two parties, often sealed by oath or sacrifice. The Law is the terms of one such covenant between God and Israel.
כָּפַר · kāphar ·
To cover, to wipe clean, to make amends. The act by which an offense is dealt with and a broken relationship is set right — in the Law, by sacrifice.
קָדוֹשׁ · qādôš · / ἅγιος · hagios ·
Set apart, separate, dedicated. To be holy is to be marked off from the common for a particular purpose — first of all, God's own apartness.
צֶדֶק · ṣedeq · / δικαιοσύνη · dikaiosynē ·
Rightness, justice, conformity to a standard. Being in the right — in conduct, in judgment, and in relationship.
אֱמוּנָה · ʾĕmûnāh · / πίστις · pistis ·
Firmness, faithfulness, trust. Less a single mental act than a settled reliance — both trusting and being trustworthy.
שׁוּב · šûb · / μετάνοια · metanoia ·
Šûb means to turn back, to return. Metanoia means a change of mind. Together: a turning around — away from one way, toward another.
קׇרְבָּן · qorbān · / θυσία · thysia ·
Qorbān literally means "that which is brought near" — an offering presented to God. It could be of thanksgiving, of fellowship, or for atonement.
גָּאַל · gāʾal · / ἀπολύτρωσις · apolytrōsis ·
To buy back, to ransom, to recover by paying a price. A redeemer (gōʾēl) was a kinsman who bought back a relative's freedom, land, or life.
Sources
The Bible, NRSVue — esp. Exodus 19–34; Leviticus 1–27; Numbers 18, 35; Deuteronomy 6, 17, 19, 24; Matthew 5, 22; Mark 7; Acts 10, 15; Hebrews 7–10. Original-language terms verified against Blue Letter Bible / Strong's.
Position: Primary text.
Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 23b (the 613 commandments); Bava Batra 14b (the tablets in the Ark).
Position: Jewish / rabbinic — the traditional enumeration and the lore of the broken tablets.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, qq. 99–105; Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 19.
Position: Catholic / Reformed — the source of the moral/civil/ceremonial division, flagged here as a later framework, not a division native to the Torah.
Blue Letter Bible / Strong's Concordance — Hebrew and Greek lexical entries used in the glossary.
Position: Reference — lexical data; theologically neutral.