Two pieces of stone inscribed with Ten Commandments
For funeral or commemorative tablets carved in stone, see Stele.
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Ten Commandments
I am the LORD thy God
No other gods before me
No graven images or likenesses
Not take the LORD's name in vain
Remember the sabbath day
Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness
Thou shalt not covet
Related articles
Tablets of Stone
Ritual Decalogue
Finger of God
Moses
Ark of the Covenant
Mount Sinai
In Catholic theology
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According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tablets of the Law (also Tablets of Stone, Stone Tablets, or Tablets of Testimony; Biblical Hebrew: לוּחֹת הַבְּרִית lūḥōt habbǝrīt "tablets of the covenant", לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן luḥōt hāʾeḇen or לֻחֹת אֶבֶן luḥōt ʾeḇen or לֻחֹת אֲבָנִים luḥōt ʾăbānīm "stone tablets", and לֻחֹת הָעֵדֻת luḥōt hāʿēdut "tablets of testimony", Arabic: أَلْوَاحُ مُوسَى āl-wāḥ Mūsā "the tablets of Moses") were the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments when Moses ascended Mount Sinai as written in the Book of Exodus.[1]
According to the biblical narrative, the first set of tablets, inscribed by the finger of God, (Exodus 31:18) were smashed by Moses when he was enraged by the sight of the Children of Israel worshiping a golden calf (Exodus 32:19) and the second were later chiseled out by Moses and rewritten by God (Exodus 34:1).
According to traditional teachings of Judaism in the Talmud, the stones were made of blue sapphire as a symbolic reminder of the sky, the heavens, and ultimately of God's throne. Many Torah scholars, however, have opined that the biblical sapir was, in fact, lapis lazuli (see Exodus 24:10, lapis lazuli is a possible alternate rendering of "sapphire" the stone pavement under God's feet when the intention to craft the tablets of the covenant is disclosed Exodus 24:12).[2]
According to Exodus 25:10–22, the tablets were stored in the Ark of the Covenant. Alan Millard and Daniel I. Block note parallels between this aspect of Israelite religion with the practice of other Ancient Near Eastern cultures whose treaty texts were preserved in their temples.[3][4] Alternatively, Thomas Römer argued in 2015 that “clearly… the tablets of the law are a substitute for something else.”[5] He holds that “the original Ark contained a statue [i.e. a cult image] of Yhwh”,[6]: 4 which he specifically identifies as “two betyles (sacred stones), or two cult image statues symbolizing Yhwh and his female companion Ashera or a statue representing Yhwh alone.”[5]
^William Schniedewind has proposed that the original contents of the tablets as described in Exodus were the instructions for building the Tabernacle. See William M. Schniedwind (2004). "7: How the Torah Became a Text". How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82946-1.
^See: Staples, W. E., "Lapis Lazuli", in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 3, p. 72
^Millard, Alan R. (2007). "The Tablets in the Ark". In McConville, J. G.; Möller, Karl (eds.). Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 264–265. ISBN 978-0-567-45454-6.
^Block, Daniel I. (2020). "For Whose Eyes? The Divine Origin and Function of the Two Tablets of the Israelite Covenant". In Block, Daniel I.; Deuel, David C.; Collins, C. John; Lawrence, Paul J. N. (eds.). Write That They May Read: Studies in Literacy and Textualization in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Scriptures: Essays in Honour of Professor Alan R. Millard. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 113. ISBN 978-1-7252-5210-3.
^ ab Thomas Römer, The Invention of God (Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 92.
^Römer, Thomas (2023). "The mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant". Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology. 77 (2): 169–185. doi:10.1080/0039338X.2023.2167861.
stonetablets, as opposed to the ten commandments inscribed on them, are called לוחות הברית \ לוּחוֹת הַבְּרִית, lukhót habrít, meaning the "tablets...
the dust are redolent of the Finger of God writing the Law on tabletsofstone. Act of God Belshazzar's feast The Creation of Adam Exodus 8:16–20 Exodus...
and furnishings of the Ark, and told that it would be made of shittim wood (also known as acacia wood) to house the TabletsofStone. Moses instructed...
legend, the souls of the dead will be gathered there for prayers. Its other name, Dome of the Tablets, comes from the TabletsofStone, which were said...
and the title of (Rosicrucian) Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Stonehenge replicas and derivatives America's Stonehenge TabletsofStone Sullivan, Randall...
the stone tablets in anger, and commands the Levites to massacre the unfaithful Israelites. God commands Moses to construct two new tablets. Moses ascends...
carved on stone using a sharp tool, e.g., the TabletsofStone described in the Bible; stamped or incised in clay and then baked to make clay tablets, e.g...
of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of...
Mount Sinai before coming down with the second ("replacement") set of the TabletsofStone. The services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur take on a solemn...
that the Ark of the Covenant contained only the tablets delivered to Moses at Horeb. In 1 Kings 19:8, Elijah visits "Horeb the mount of God". According...
ofstone or wood erected as a monument or marker Tabula ansata, tablets with handles Vindolanda tablets, Roman era writings found in Britain Tablet (magazine)...
alchemists associated the Emerald Tablet with the creation of the philosophers' stone and the artificial production of gold. It has also been popular with...
fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were either deliberately...
foreground, his right hand palm up and his left hand on the TabletsofStone. The tablets are in shadow, their contents, the Ten Commandments, are unreadable...
which Yahweh appeared and dwelled. This was connected with the rituals of the Day of Atonement. The term also appears in later Jewish sources, and twice...
traditionally use mezuzot, but put up a small plaque in the shape of the two Tabletsof the Law with the Ten Commandments. In Israel, where they might try...
in darkness and contained the Ark of the Covenant, gilded inside and out, in which was placed the TabletsofStone. According to both Jewish and Christian...
widespread over the 1st millennium, engraved on the faces of cliffs, on pillars, on tabletsofstone, drawn in caves and on rocks, some gouged into the bedrock...
on 114 stonetablets, are preserved in the Stele Forest Museum in Xi'an, China. Widely regarded as the world's heaviest books, these tablets are also...
the golden calf sin, Moses descended from Mount Sinai and broke the TabletsofStone, which contained the Ten Commandments and symbolized the covenant with...
compared to "a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written ... not on tabletsofstone but on tabletsof human hearts"; this interpretation states...
compared to "a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written ... not on tabletsofstone but on tabletsof human hearts"; this interpretation states...
holy articles, including the Ark of the Covenant containing the TabletsofStone, before which were placed the pot of manna and Aaron's rod, the Urim and...
to writing tablets in Homer was far from anachronistic. An archaeological discovery in 1979 in Durrës, Albania found two wax tablets made of ivory in a...
bulbs. At the top of the facade there is a sculpture of the TabletsofStone bearing the Ten Commandments. During the German occupation of France in World...
deal of auspiciousness, may my doors welcome hundreds of blessings". In Taoism, spirit tablets are often used for ancestors. Sometimes spirit tablets are...