# The Two Tables of the Law hewed by Moses



## Peairtach (Dec 28, 2013)

> And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.(Ex 24:12)





> And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.(Ex 31:18)





> And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. *And the tables were the work of God,* and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.(Ex 32:15-16)





> And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.(Ex 32:19)





> *And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first*: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.(Ex 34:1)





> And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.(Ex 34:4)





> And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he {presumably God?} wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.(Ex 34:28)



What is the significance of the fact - if any - that Moses made the second set of two tables of stone rather than the Lord.


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## ProtestantBankie (Dec 28, 2013)

Would you like to hear the rambling thoughts of a younger Christian?

If not - then I will also sit out and wait for a better mind to give an answer.


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## yeutter (Dec 29, 2013)

I take the rewriting of the ten commandments on new slabs of stone to have been done by God himself. Compare Deut 10:1-4


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## Leslie (Dec 29, 2013)

I think God wanted Moses to go through the trouble of making the new slabs in order to underscore His displeasure at Moses' fit of temper when he broke the first ones.


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## Tirian (Dec 29, 2013)

ProtestantBankie said:


> Would you like to hear the rambling thoughts of a younger Christian?



Yes, please.


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## Tirian (Dec 29, 2013)

Peairtach said:


> What is the significance of the fact - if any - that Moses made the second set of two tables of stone rather than the Lord.



Something to do with God's law framed and written perfectly being broken by mankind, then the message being carried in a form framed by man but authored in the mind of God. Prophets, Apostles etc...


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## Peairtach (Dec 29, 2013)

Leslie said:


> I think God wanted Moses to go through the trouble of making the new slabs in order to underscore His displeasure at Moses' fit of temper when he broke the first ones.



That may be it. After all, although Moses was a meek man, he had occasional outbursts when he acted impulsively and beyond what the Lord had commanded, when he was greatly tried by the Israelites, and smashing the tables was sinful, something that I've never thought about in that way. The labour of hewing the new tablets would be an appropriate chastisement but sadly he didn't learn the full lesson and fell into sin again in a similar way at the incident of striking the rock.

I was wondering if there were any typological or symbolical considerations, Moses being a type of Christ, but maybe not.

The smashing of the original tables, although sinful, is expressive of the fact that once the Israelites had broken one law, they had broken them all, and that because of sin they could not be reconciled to God through the works of the law but by grace through faith in the Mediator typified by Moses, the priests and the sacrifices.

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## a mere housewife (Dec 30, 2013)

Matthew Henry/Thomas Scott say something similar to what Mr Glover mentioned: comparing the first tables of stone to the covenant made with Adam which man broke, and the second to the ministry of men God used afterwards, though the writing was still His (in the inspiration of Scripture and in the heart).


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## ProtestantBankie (Dec 30, 2013)

Tirian said:


> ProtestantBankie said:
> 
> 
> > Would you like to hear the rambling thoughts of a younger Christian?
> ...



It shows various lessons
1) That destruction of God's law result in God keeping back certain help (now Moses has to hew out the stone)
2) That recovery of God's law takes human effort and cannot allow us to wait for God. If we want the 10 Commandments today, we need to provide our hearts for God to write them on.
3) That God set a precedent that he was happy to preserve his word using human agents, that allows something like the transmission of the Old and New Testaments to be of God despite the work of men to again produce the materials.

But these are just heart thoughts and musings. Not expository considerations. I hasten to add.


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## GloriousBoaz (Dec 30, 2013)

Human agency as a secondary cause/means. I see that God wants to include us, I know that sounds pretty simplistic and even sentimental but I think its true, plus it shows us that that work isn't easy, hewing out some stone without cracking the tablet in half using only hand tools by a amateur is hard work. It takes precision and sweat of the brow, and so too should our ministering of God's Word today, it should take precision and sweat, research and even a delicate touch so as not to break in half the true meaning by applying too much pressure from our own presuppostiions to its interpretation. It is interesting that the last thing God sets up and talks about when He gave the tablets the first time is about the sabbath and about rest. When he gave the tablets the next time Moses had to work and not rest, or at least he had to toil more like Adam, so I think there is a bit of punishment factored in there, not just in the moment but extending into the type of it reflecting preaching and teaching and handling God's Word today. Paul's hard sayings probably don't take huge amounts of time and study to correctly exegete in heaven, and if there never was a fall our presuppositions and interpretive lenses wouldn't be there to get in the way, and thus be needed to work through with sweat and tears as they are today.

Also look at Exodus 33 just previous to exodus 34 in what transpired just previous to the giving of the second set of tablets, interesting insight.


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## Tirian (Dec 31, 2013)

ProtestantBankie said:


> It shows various lessons
> 1) That destruction of God's law result in God keeping back certain help (now Moses has to hew out the stone)
> 2) That recovery of God's law takes human effort and cannot allow us to wait for God. If we want the 10 Commandments today, we need to provide our hearts for God to write them on.
> 3) That God set a precedent that he was happy to preserve his word using human agents, that allows something like the transmission of the Old and New Testaments to be of God despite the work of men to again produce the materials.
> ...



Good thoughts. With #2 I'm thinking there could be an extension there with heart of stone vs heart of flesh...


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## Peairtach (Dec 31, 2013)

GloriousBoaz said:


> Human agency as a secondary cause/means. I see that God wants to include us, I know that sounds pretty simplistic and even sentimental but I think its true, plus it shows us that that work isn't easy, hewing out some stone without cracking the tablet in half using only hand tools by a amateur is hard work. It takes precision and sweat of the brow, and so too should our ministering of God's Word today, it should take precision and sweat, research and even a delicate touch so as not to break in half the true meaning by applying too much pressure from our own presuppostiions to its interpretation. It is interesting that the last thing God sets up and talks about when He gave the tablets the first time is about the sabbath and about rest. When he gave the tablets the next time Moses had to work and not rest, or at least he had to toil more like Adam, so I think there is a bit of punishment factored in there, not just in the moment but extending into the type of it reflecting preaching and teaching and handling God's Word today. Paul's hard sayings probably don't take huge amounts of time and study to correctly exegete in heaven, and if there never was a fall our presuppositions and interpretive lenses wouldn't be there to get in the way, and thus be needed to work through with sweat and tears as they are today.
> 
> Also look at Exodus 33 just previous to exodus 34 in what transpired just previous to the giving of the second set of tablets, interesting insight.



I was originally thinking that this action of making the Tablets might be a further way in which Moses was an eminent type of Christ, the law first being given to Man from God's hand, and then Man working out a perfect obedience to the law in Christ, the mediator. 

It gets a bit complicated and "multi-layered" if Moses is also being chastised for his own sin by this action, but genuine typology, which is always an incomplete shadow, is sometimes like this. Christ of course had to suffer for our sins only, in working out a righteousness for His people. Moses was suffering, much less than Christ, because of the sins of the people and his own sin. 

Moses is an eminent type of Christ, with numerous parallels and contrasts.

There's a book by a Victorian lady, Ada R. Habershon, that lists the ways in which Moses was a type of Christ, some of them genuine, some of them fanciful ("A Study of the Types", Kregel).

"Wonderful things in the Bible are seen; Some by you and some by me", and they're not always really there.


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## GloriousBoaz (Dec 31, 2013)

Peairtach said:


> It gets a bit complicated and "multi-layered" if Moses is also being chastised for his own sin by this action, but genuine typology, which is always an incomplete shadow, is sometimes like this.


 Very much agree with this, look at the typology in Samson, it is powerful, undeniable, and beautiful yet it comes mixed in with a man that looses the Holy Spirit without noticing, is a womenizer and is insufferably arrogant, yet Samson is most certainly a type of Christ in scripture. You look at the King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28 it is clearly satan (In my humble opinion) but the chapter before seems to be clearly only the king of Tyre. I had another example in mind but just forgot, perhaps Isaiah with Christ's prophecies or Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar, I forget.


Peairtach said:


> Christ of course had to suffer for our sins only, in working out a righteousness for His people. Moses was suffering, much less than Christ, because of the sins of the people and his own sin.


 Very insightful!


Peairtach said:


> There's a book by a Victorian lady, Ada R. Habershon, that lists the ways in which Moses was a type of Christ, some of them genuine, some of them fanciful ("A Study of the Types", Kregel).


 Cool! Has anyone looked this conversation up in Patrick Fairbairns' typology works? I have not read them yet so I wouldn't know where to look.


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## Peairtach (Dec 31, 2013)

I'be read Fairbairn, but I don't.think he covers this detail.

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## GloriousBoaz (Jan 1, 2014)

Huh I would've thought he had covered it.


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## Peairtach (Jan 2, 2014)

His book on typology would have been unmanageably larger if he'd gone into every detail.

I haven't yet checked what the older commentators , like Henry, have to say on this, but I'm sure they'll say something.

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## iainduguid (Jan 2, 2014)

Leslie said:


> I think God wanted Moses to go through the trouble of making the new slabs in order to underscore His displeasure at Moses' fit of temper when he broke the first ones.



I'm not sure why people would conclude that Moses' anger was a fit of temper. Moses is the archetypal prophet, and the prophets are frequently called upon to share and express the Lord's attitude towards the people. The Lord's wrath against the people was exhibited in the death of many of the offenders. What is more, breaking the stone tablets was not merely like throwing a plate in a rage: as Nahum Sarna points out, this action had specific legal ramifications in an ancient Near Eastern context. These were the covenant treaty documents: by destroying them, he was making the point that the people's sin with the Golden Calf had, as it were, ripped up their marriage certificate with the Lord. Note also the repeated language of "a great sin" which is often used in cognate languages specifically to describe adultery. In other words, the covenant was no sooner made at Sinai than it was shattered by human sin. Unless the Lord had graciously agreed to the covenant documents being re-written, there wouldn't have been anything else to write about in the Old Testament. I think that is the proper context in which to think about Moses being the one to re-inscribe the tablets.


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## GloriousBoaz (Jan 3, 2014)

Righteous indignation.. good point Iain!


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## AdventTruth (Jan 11, 2014)

What I see in the breaking of the tablets by Moses...is identification. When coming down the mountain...Moses sees the sin of the people and though Moses had a sort of righteous indignation or displeasure in what he saw, he too is identified with Israel and all of humanity by the mere fact he literally broke the (law) "tablets" in smashing them. The very act of Moses in throwing down and breaking the law as he did IS a metaphor of what all of humanity has done including Moses himself. I suspect Gods orders to Moses to cut new tablets was a way of keeping him humble and not thinking he was better than the others... I suspect as Moses was laboring in cutting new tablets he was humbled as he too realized his identification with the people.


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## One Little Nail (Jan 11, 2014)

ProtestantBankie said:


> Would you like to hear the rambling thoughts of a younger Christian?





Tirian said:


> Yes, please.





ProtestantBankie said:


> It shows various lessons
> 1) That destruction of God's law result in God keeping back certain help (now Moses has to hew out the stone)
> 2) That recovery of God's law takes human effort and cannot allow us to wait for God. If we want the 10 Commandments today, we need to provide our hearts for God to write them on.
> 3) That God set a precedent that he was happy to preserve his word using human agents, that allows something like the transmission of the Old and New Testaments to be of God despite the work of men to again produce the materials.
> ...





Peairtach said:


> What is the significance of the fact - if any - that Moses made the second set of two tables of stone rather than the Lord.



We cannot say as the first Inerrant Autographs were lost when Moses broke them in a fit of rage & all we have were an uncertain copy & variant readings.

nah just kidding, as you can see God is perfectly capable of restoring the Lost original Text , & the purpose of writing on stone was if I can speculate, as this most clearly resembled the state of mans heart, so I presume it was granite.


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## Peairtach (Jan 11, 2014)

One Little Nail said:


> ProtestantBankie said:
> 
> 
> > Would you like to hear the rambling thoughts of a younger Christian?
> ...



Yes. Unless Moses had prepared under divine inspiration, previously, part of the Pentateuch, the tables of stone were the first part of God's Word written.

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