The number 10

Testimony, law, completeness of divine order

Ten frames the law itself, the Ten Commandments given at Sinai (Exodus 20:1-17; 34:28), the ten plagues that broke Pharaoh's resistance (Exodus 7-12), and the tithe, a tenth given back to God (Leviticus 27:30). Jesus tells of ten virgins and, elsewhere, ten pieces of silver, in each case a complete, countable whole (Matthew 25:1; Luke 15:8). E. W. Bullinger reads ten as a complete and ordered whole, "nothing wanting," the full round of a matter, and stacks up further tens across Scripture, from Abraham's ten trials to the Lord's Prayer's ten clauses, in support. The commandments, plagues and tithe are the text's own direct uses of ten as a full set; Bullinger's list of additional tens elsewhere extends the same idea, honestly labeled as the tradition's own further reading.

The mathematics

The fourth triangular number: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 — the Pythagorean tetractys, laid out as a triangle of ten counters.
The third tetrahedral number: ten spheres stack into a perfect triangular pyramid, which is why ten pins stand the way they do.
Ten looks uniquely round to us because we count in tens — a fact about our notation, not about the number.

Every property here was checked before it was printed.

The same number, in what He made

Ten fingers are the reason nearly every culture counts in tens; where counting systems run on five or twenty, the hand and foot explain those too (Georges Ifrah, The Universal History of Numbers).

Sources are named in the line itself. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”

What they have said about this number

Ordinal perfection — the whole cycle complete, nothing wanting.

“Completeness of order, marking the entire round of anything, is, therefore, the ever-present signification of the number ten.”

E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture (1894)

“Perfect order — timelines, and how God carries out a plan in perfect order.”

Troy Brewer, Numbers That Preach (2007)

In Hebrew and Greek

Hebrew

Eser (עֶשֶׂר) - ten

Greek

Deka (δέκα) - ten

First occurrence

Genesis 3:11

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

The pattern in Scripture

Ten Commandments
Ten plagues of Egypt
Tithe - the tenth
Ten virgins (Matt 25)
Ten lepers healed (Luke 17)

Key verses

Genesis 3:11

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded th...

Genesis 3:17

And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the...

Genesis 5:14

And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died.

Genesis 4:1

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the...

Genesis 4:5

But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance f...

10:10 verses

Genesis 10:10

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Exodus 10:10

And he said unto them, Let the Lord be so with you, as I will let you go, and your little ones: look...

Leviticus 10:10

And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;

Numbers 10:10

Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye ...

Deuteronomy 10:10

And I stayed in the mount, according to the first time, forty days and forty nights; and the Lord he...