The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
Parallel translations
- WEB The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
- KJV And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
- NKJV Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.
- NASB The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing engraved on the tablets.
- NLT These tablets were God’s work; the words on them were written by God himself.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The tablets and their writing were the direct work of God. This stresses the divine origin and authority of the law.
Overview
The text emphasizes that both the stone and the engraving came from God Himself, underscoring the law's holiness. This divine authorship gives the Ten Commandments their enduring authority. It also magnifies Israel's guilt, for they have spurned words written by the very hand of God.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 9
- Exod 31:18When the LORD had finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
- Heb 8:10For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their minds and inscribe them on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people.
- Exod 34:1Then the LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.
- Deut 9:9–11When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread and drank no water.
- Deut 9:15So I went back down the mountain while it was blazing with fire, with the two tablets of the covenant in my hands.
- 2 Cor 3:3It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
- Deut 10:1At that time the LORD said to me, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the originals, come up to Me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood.
- Exod 34:4So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the originals. He rose early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hands, he went up Mount Sinai as the LORD had commanded him.
- 2 Cor 3:7Now if the ministry of death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at the face of Moses because of its fleeting glory,
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Passover lamb whose blood turns away death, the exodus through the sea, the manna, the rock, and the tabernacle where God dwells with his people all foreshadow Jesus — our Passover, our redemption, the bread from heaven, and God-with-us in the flesh.
How Exodus 32:16 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.