The Ritual Decalogue is a list of laws at Exodus 34:11–26. These laws are similar to the Covenant Code and are followed by the phrase "Ten Commandments" (Hebrew: עשרת הדברים aseret ha-dvarîm, in Exodus 34:28). Although the phrase "Ten Commandments" has traditionally been interpreted as referring to a very different set of laws, in Exodus 20:2–17, many scholars believe it instead refers to the Ritual Decalogue found two verses earlier.

Critical biblical scholars understand the two sets of laws to have different authorship. Early scholars, adopting a proposal of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, contrasted the "Ritual" Decalogue with the "Ethical" Decalogue of Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21, which are the texts more generally known as the Ten Commandments. Believing that the Bible reflected a shift over time from an emphasis on the ritual to the ethical, they argued that the Ritual Decalogue was composed earlier than the Ethical Decalogue. Later scholars have held that they were actually parallel developments, with the Ethical Decalogue a late addition to Exodus copied from Deuteronomy, or that the Ritual Decalogue was the later of the two, a conservative reaction to the secular Ethical Decalogue. A few Bible scholars call the verses in Exodus 34 the "small Covenant code", as it appears to be a compact version of the Covenant Code in Exodus 20:19–23:33; they argue the small Covenant code was composed around the same time as the Decalogue of Exodus 20, but either served different functions within Israelite religion, or reflects the influence of other Ancient Near Eastern religious texts.

The word decalogue comes from the Greek name for the Ten Commandments, δέκα λόγοι (déka lógoi; "ten terms"), a translation of the Hebrew עשרת הדברים (aseret ha-dvarîm "the ten items/terms").

The Ritual Decalogue is framed in the context of God making a covenant with Israel:

Assuming that Moses is being commanded to write down the content of verses 15–26 on the new tablets, this would be the only place in the Bible where the phrase Ten Commandments identifies an explicit set of commandments.

While Orthodox Judaism and Christianity hold that both sets of tablets contained the same ten commandments, some scholars identify verses 11–26 as an alternate "ten commandments" which they call the "ritual" decalogue. For these scholars, the terms "ritual decalogue" and "ethical decalogue" are a way of distinguishing between alternate inscriptions of the ten commandments.

The commandments in the Ritual Decalogue are expanded upon in the Covenant Code, which occurs prior to it in the Torah, and thus have the impression of being a summary of the important points in the Code. The Covenant Code is believed by most scholars of biblical criticism as having originally been a separate text to the Torah, and thus there is much debate as to the relationship between the Ritual Decalogue and Covenant Code. There are essentially two positions, neither of which is decisively supported, either by evidence, or by number of scholars:

The documentary hypothesis identifies the Ritual Decalogue as the work of the Jahwist, from the Kingdom of Judah, and the Covenant Code as that of the Elohist, from the Kingdom of Israel, both writing independently. It does not however answer the question of how these texts were related, merely that the Ritual Decalogue circulated in Judah, and the Covenant Code in Israel. What the documentary hypothesis does partly explain is the relationship of the Ritual Decalogue to the Ethical Decalogue, and why, instead of the Ethical Decalogue, it is the Ritual Decalogue which is written on the two tablets when Moses ascends the mountain to have the Ethical Decalogue inscribed for a second time.