-- and Jehovah delivered to me the two tables of stone written with the finger of God; and on them [was written] according to all the words which Jehovah spoke with you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.
Moses is retelling Mount Sinai to a new generation. This verse is his account of the moment God handed him the two stone tablets. God wrote them Himself, and He wrote the words the people had already heard out of the fire. Why does Moses bring up that scene here? His whole speech is set on proving that Israel had no righteousness of its own.
Most of the Bible reaches us through human writers, in human language. God does that so we can understand it. The law was the exception.
Nobody doubts that Scripture without exception has a human element. In it God speaks and writes permanently to man, and therefore in human language. We would not understand it otherwise… It is easy to see His wisdom in writing this way, by man to man. There is one most solemn exception: the law, with all its range of meaning, in the language of His ancient people.
The tablets did not show what God is like. They stated what He wanted from Israel.
The finger of God wrote what stood on the two tablets of stone. It set out what He required from the people the law was given to. It was not a revelation of God Himself. It was the lawgiver declaring His demand on the people of Israel. He says, as it were, to Israel, "You are to be that, or come under the curse." They were not that, and so they came under the curse.
The verse says the writing matched the words the people had heard. That tells us what stood on the tablets, and what Israel had agreed to.
So the two tablets held the ten "words," or commandments, spoken in Exodus 20. Now the finger of God wrote them out. Israel had promised to keep these commandments as the condition of blessing. After the Red Sea, God had set them on the ground of grace. They left that ground. By themselves and for themselves, at God's proposal, they took on the responsibility of obedience.
Moses names the day after the gathering at the mountain. What met the people there was a boundary line and a death warning.
And now see how the law unfolds in what Moses elsewhere calls "the day of the assembly."… "You shall set limits for the people all around, saying, 'Take care not to go up into the mountain or touch the edge of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall be put to death.'"… "Draw near to me," says God, "and you die." And that is why the apostle says it was the "ministry of death" (2 Cor. 3:7).
Moses is attacking Israel's self-confidence. God will give them the land, but not because they earned it.
In effect he says to the people — Don't imagine God will give you the victory because you have deserved it. Then he went on, as the rest of this chapter shows. He reminded the people of their great unbelief and sin in making the golden calf. He reminded them how they refused to go up to the land when the spies came back. All this proved that they had no righteousness in which to stand before their God.
Moses broke the first set at the foot of the mountain. The second set ended up in a very different place, and that difference points to Christ.
Do you know what happened afterwards, when Moses brought down the tablets of stone the second time? He put them into the ark. Why? Because there was never any man but Christ who kept the law. If it is a question of the first man's responsibility, failure shows at once; all is gone. So Moses breaks the first tablets of stone at the base of the mountain. But the second tablets of stone went into that ark… One day "a king will reign in righteousness." Then the law that the tablets of stone reveal will be set up. It will be written in Israel's heart, and everything will be according to it.
God is still writing today. The surface has changed, and so has what He writes.
The tablets themselves were the work of God, and the testimony inscribed on them was the writing of God. In the coming day, under the new covenant, the law will be written in the hearts of the people. At the present time the Spirit of God is writing not the law but Christ upon the hearts of those who receive the gospel. But here God's righteous demands on men stood cut into stone.
- God wrote. God usually writes through a human pen. Here He used His own finger, and the letters were permanent.
- Man broke. The writing was a demand, not a portrait: be this, or fall under the curse. Israel fell.
- Moses argues. Moses retells the story to strip away self-confidence. The golden calf proved they had no righteousness to stand on before God.
- Christ kept. Moses smashed the first tablets at the foot of the mountain. The second went into the ark, because only One ever kept them.
- The Spirit writes. Hearts now replace stone. The Spirit writes Christ on believers today; the law will be written in Israel's heart in the day to come.
And it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights, that Jehovah gave me the two tables of stone, the tables of the covenant.
Moses is retelling Israel's history, and this verse is the hinge: God hands him the two stone tablets after forty days and nights alone on the mountain. The next verse sends him straight back down to a camp that has already thrown the covenant away.
The verse calls them "the tablets of the covenant." So what was written on them, and what had Israel agreed to?
It appears then that the two tablets held the ten "words," or commandments, spoken in Exodus 20, now written by the finger of God. These were the commandments Israel undertook to keep as the condition of blessing. God had put them on the ground of grace after they crossed the Red Sea, and they abandoned it. Of themselves, and for themselves, at God's proposal, they took on the responsibility of obedience.
The stone set a standard, with a consequence attached.
The finger of God wrote what stood on the two tablets of stone. It presented what He required from the people the law addressed. It was not the revelation of God. It was the lawgiver declaring His demand on the people of Israel. He says, in effect, to Israel, "You are to be that, or come under the curse." They were not that, and so they came under the curse.
Why did the giving take forty days? The answer lies down in the camp, not on the mountain.
Moses was forty days on the mountain, where God was showing him the pattern of the things for the tabernacle. This length of time was not needed for God. In a moment He could have made Moses see everything and understand everything. Why then forty days? In the wisdom of God it was the time needed to test the people. Would they obey, and wait patiently for the rules they had vowed to keep? They were so far from seeing the solemn responsibilities they had taken on that they did not even wait to hear them.
The wait also set Moses apart from ordinary life.
Moses had been forty days and forty nights on the mountain, and during that time he neither ate nor drank. He was, as it were, in a state above nature, so that he could become the channel of God's communications for His people. The flesh must not intrude, but must be set aside, and in some sense nature also, if we want to hear the voice of God.
The tablets were now in Moses' hands. They never reached the people they were written for.
First, Moses went up and received the law, engraved by the finger of God on two tablets of stone. But before he had even brought it to the people, they had broken it. They had made a golden calf to worship. That broke the very first link with God: "You shall have no other gods before me." Moses saw it, threw the tablets of the law out of his hands, and broke them. So pure law never came into the camp at all. Law came in afterwards, when mercy was shown too, but law on its own never did.
That first covenant, taken by itself, had no room in it for recovery.
The law, as given the first time — pure law and nothing else — held no remedy in it. Israel did not stand under it at all, so no one could expect to stand. The man who had just carried the first tablets down broke them at the foot of the mountain, and nothing was left of the covenant but penalty.
Moses does not retell this failure for its own sake. He aims at something in his hearers.
This chapter and the first eleven verses of chapter ten strike at the spirit of self-righteousness. First comes the warning. Then comes their shameful past. It showed that in their case, any boast of being righteous, or of having righteousness, was ruled out. They had been rebels. They owed their existence to the mercy of God alone, and the pleading of Moses for them secured it.
The broken tablets were not the end of the story. Moses came down a second time, and where those tablets ended up matters.
Do you know what happened afterwards, when Moses brought down the tablets of stone the second time? He put them into the ark. Why? Because there was never any man but Christ who kept the law. If it is a question of the first man's responsibility, failure shows at once; all is gone. So Moses breaks the first tablets of stone at the base of the mountain. But the second tablets of stone went into that ark.
- Written — God wrote His demand in His own hand. Israel had promised to keep those terms as the condition of blessing.
- Waited — The forty days were a test of patience; Israel would not even wait to hear the rules they had sworn to obey.
- Wrecked — Israel broke the covenant before the tablets reached the camp. Pure law never entered the camp at all, and nothing was left of it but penalty.
- Warned — Moses retells all this to kill self-righteousness. Mercy, not merit, had kept Israel alive.
- Kept — Only Christ ever kept the law. That is why the second tablets went inside the ark.