Take Two Tablets

Most artistic representations of the Ten Commandments present two rectangular tablets rounded off at the top. As pleasing to the eyes as this rounded design may be, tradition suggests that the luchot (tablets) were “six handbreadths in length, six in breadth and three in thickness” (Baba Batra 14a). To clarify, the luchot were large, thick and square (and incredibly heavy).

Two large, square chunks of carved stone may not appear to be particularly artistic, but the Torah itself provides some interesting details that allow us to imagine just how magnificent the luchot were. The Torah records that Moses stood on Mount Sinai for 40 days and, at the end of that time, God gave Moses “the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18). Similarly, it is written “Moses turned, and went down from the mount, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand; tablets that were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. And the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tablets” (Exodus 32:15-16).

The tablets of the Ten Commandments were not fashioned with a hammer and chisel, but rather “carved” with the finger of God. The luchot had the miraculous effect that “The writing of the Tablets could be read from within and without” (Shabbat 104a). According to tradition, this does not mean that God wrote the same words on both sides, but that, although God carved straight through the stone, the writing was legible from which ever direction one looked.

This Treat was last posted on January 30, 2013.