Concise Bible Dictionary:
This term in the Old Testament generally signifies that which God “ordered” for His people to observe. “They kept His testimonies, and the ordinance that He gave them” (Psa. 99:7). “Ye are gone away from Mine ordinances” (Mal. 3:7). It is also applied to things in creation: God giveth “the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night” (Jer. 31:35). David made an ordinance (Ezra 3:10: Compare Neh. 10:32). In the New Testament it refers especially to the enactments of the law: “ordinances of divine service” (Heb. 9:1,10); “blotting out the handwriting of ordinances” (Col. 2:14). It is also applied to human laws (Rom. 13:2; 1 Peter 2:13); and to the rules of the moralists (Col. 2:20). The directions that Paul had given to the Corinthians are in the AV called “ordinances” (1 Cor. 11:2); margin, “traditions.”