The current division of the Bible into chapters and the verse numbers within the chapters has no basis in any ancient textual tradition. Rather, they are medieval and early modern Christian inventions. They were later adopted by many Jews as well, as technical references within the Hebrew text.... The earliest extant Jewish manuscript to note the chapter divisions dates from 1330, and the first printed edition was in 1516. (Wikipedia article on "Chapters and verses of the Bible", 26-11-2014)
I understand "technical references" to mean that, whatever else their worth or significance may or may not be, the practical value of the conventional divisions of the text of Bible books into chapters and verses is that we can all be sure which spot in the original text we think we're at. When asked where in the Bible the Ten Commandments are to be found, if there were no chapters and verses (or some such system) we wouldn't be able to reply that the first place they are found is in the book of Exodus, chapter 20, versus 1 to 17 (Exodus 20:1-17). We'd have to say "somewhere in Exodus", or "on page 115", or open our bible and point to it and say "here." Footnotes in bibles would be more complicated, as would biblical commentaries, blogs like this one, and so on.
