And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
Parallel translations
- WEB The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
- BSB The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
- 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 31:18And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.
- Heb 8:10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
- Exod 34:1And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.
- Deut 9:9–11When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:
- Deut 9:15So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands.
- 2 Cor 3:3Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
- Deut 10:1At that time the LORD said unto me, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first, and come up unto me into the mount, and make thee an ark of wood.
- Exod 34:4And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.
- 2 Cor 3:7But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
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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
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