The tablets of the covenant

The tablets are promised for teaching, not for display. That thou mayest teach them gives the stone its destination before Moses ever carries it down the mountain. Earlier in the chapter, the people have heard the covenant read and answered together; the writing does not introduce a secret religion available only to the man inside the cloud. It gives lasting form to words that bind a people.

The approach is slower than the invitation might suggest. Come up is followed by six days beneath the cloud before the call on the seventh. Moses does not set the appointment simply by arriving. Meanwhile, ordinary disputes still need someone to hear them, so Aaron and Hur are left available to the elders. The mountain burns before Israel's eyes, and the camp still requires administration. The Book of Exodus places those facts together without embarrassment. Revelation has not abolished the practical business of living together, and the law about to be given belongs to precisely that business.

The tablets get their fullest physical description just before they are broken. Both sides bear writing. Both the stonework and the engraving are God's work. The Book of Exodus makes the loss concrete before it happens; Moses is not carrying rough notes that can casually be copied out again. The covenant has acquired a material witness, and that witness is in his hands.

Below him stands another made object. The calf is human workmanship credited with divine deliverance, while the tablets are divine workmanship rejected by human conduct. That reversal gives the scene its terrible precision. Joshua hears what sounds like battle; Moses distinguishes singing, and the sight confirms the character of the noise. His anger is stated, not something that needs to be invented. He throws the tablets down beneath the mountain where the covenant was received. The passage does not record a command to break them, but neither does it present an accidental slip. The broken stone makes the already broken allegiance visible.

The man carrying the evidence is also carrying evidence on his face, and he does not know it. Moses comes down with the tablets in his hand, but the people's attention catches on the skin of his face. The radiance is not a display he has arranged. Moses wist not. That small statement rules out a performance more effectively than a paragraph praising his humility would have done.

The people are afraid to approach, including Aaron, whose hands had made the calf. But the next movement is not permanent withdrawal: Moses calls them near and communicates the commandments. The brightness does not replace the words he has brought. Second Corinthians 3:7-18 later builds an argument about covenantal glory from this face and the veil described in the following verses. Paul reads the event through the surpassing glory of the new covenant; the Book of Exodus first presents the concrete encounter. A face shines, a frightened assembly hesitates, and the man they hesitate to approach begins to speak.