“Then Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides – inscribed front and back. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was God’s writing, engraved on the tablets.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

All the words of the Scriptures matter. If we are going to understand them properly, that’s a pretty fundamental point for interpretation. The apostle Paul made as much clear when he said that every word of the Scriptures was breathed out by God. Our lack of understanding of some of them doesn’t mean they don’t matter. It means we don’t understand them. Interludes like this one often seem out of place as they interrupt the flow of the larger story in which they sit. Let’s talk about why this bit got included here.

We live in a hyper visual age. Kids start with screens in front of their faces from incredibly early on in their development. These screens flash a barrage of images that are designed and intended to distract them from the world around them. Even before they can fully process what they are seeing, they are taught that images are a place to escape from the woes and worries of the world. Whether or not this is a good thing we can talk about later (spoiler alert: it isn’t), but that it is a thing is indisputable.

In a visual world like we have, if we want to make something memorable, there are all kinds of options before us for doing that. Even in the context of something that is primarily text like these blog posts, if I really want to bring emphasis to a particular word or phrase, there are several ways I can do that. I can make it bold. I can put it in italics. There’s the option to underline it. I could even go crazy and use bold and italics and underline all at the same time. And we haven’t even touched on going ALL CAPS, but that’s the text equivalent of shouting, and I didn’t want to hurt your rhetorical ears.

In the ancient world, they didn’t have any of those options. What they did have was the use of creative literary options like the chiasms I occasionally point out to you. I learned to recognize those in seminary. My New Testament professor could find them everywhere in the text. After at least four classes with him, some of that tendency rubbed off on me. Another common device for emphasis was simply repeating something. When you read a passage that uses the word or phrase in a fairly tight window of text, there’s a good chance the author was trying to draw our attention to it.

Well, this is the second time in a fairly limited window of text that we encounter this idea that the words inscribed in these two stone tablets are God’s words and work. In the context of this one passage, it is repeated four times in different ways. “They were inscribed on both sides.” “Inscribed front and back.” That was in case you didn’t understand what “both sides” meant. “The tablets were the work of God.” “The writing was God’s writing.” When the same idea appeared back at the end of chapter 31, Moses described the tablets as “stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God.” You think perhaps He’s trying to make a point with all of this?

The obviously intentional emphasis here is that the words of the covenant that Moses had shared with the people and was now bringing to them in a permanent fashion (literally written in stone) are God’s words. They weren’t made up by Moses, they were received from God Himself. No part of the covenant the people made with God came from them. He was the one who initiated it. He defined it. He bound Himself to it. He kept it. It was all God from start to finish.

Okay, but does this mean God showed up in physical form and scribbled on these two pieces of rock? Perhaps. I’m not willing to categorically rule that out. He is a supernatural God who is capable of doing supernatural things. Showing up physically and literally doing all of this Himself falls well within the parameters of what He is capable of doing. We know from the Genesis narrative that God had been making physical appearances before His followers for a long time. Abraham and Jacob both had more than one such experience. Abraham himself had several. The idea that God could appear in both spiritual and physical form was something the people already understood and which they had long held stories about their ancestors experiencing.

That all being said, and as I said when we talked about Exodus 31:18, I personally lean more in the direction of these being emphatic anthropomorphisms. Moses was the one who physically did this work, likely aided by Joshua in some way, but they used the language of God’s being the one to actually do the inscribing to drive home the point that the words of the covenant were His. Moses and Joshua may have been the vehicles for their appearing on the tablets, but it was God’s work that was being done. They were God’s words that were being written. It was as if God’s finger was the way they got there.

This, however, still leaves unanswered the question of why this bit is here in the first place. Moses had interceded on the people’s behalf before God. He had learned his lesson of sharing in God’s passion for the people and for their righteousness. Now he was going down the mountain to check out the scene for himself. Why interrupt all of that by referring back to the tablets he was carrying?

This is again a point of emphasis. We are to see all of this through the lens of the people’s violation of the covenant. This repetition of the bit about the tablets being God’s words reminds us of what’s at stake here. It wasn’t that people were merely drifting a bit off course. They had flagrantly violated God’s very words. God had put the words of the covenant that they had just agreed to down in stone. They were never to be altered or violated in any way if the people were to remain in the covenant. But they had. This is a way of driving home just how grievous was their sin.

Violating God’s words still matters. We don’t have them written down in stone anywhere, but we have had them preserved down through history for us. The miraculous nature of that should give them at least a little bit of weight all by itself. God is the one who defines all of reality. If He has said something should work in a certain way, to do it other than that way is to live in a dangerous fantasy world which, even if it looks harmless and fun, is far more sinister than it appears. There is no life to be found in these delusional fantasies, and God wants us to live.

Just like Israel was wrong to agree to God’s words and then run off in their own direction, so are we. We don’t have the same covenant as them any longer, but as His followers, we do live in a covenant with Him. And in that covenant, His word is to be obeyed. Jesus is to be acknowledged as Lord because He is. Those commands, though, are not arbitrary, but intentional. They are not capricious, but for our good. And at least under the terms of our covenant, they all boil down to a single, simple idea: Love one another after the pattern of Jesus’ love for us. When we do that, we will be living. So, let’s do that.