Preparing To Receive God's Message
Unlike the first tablets, the second tablets, which were hewn by human hands, endured.
By Rabbi Melvin I. Burg; Provided by the Orthodox Union, the central coordinating agency for North American Orthodox congregations.
"And Moses went up to God." The great event, toward which all of creation moved from the hour of its inception, was about to take place.
The entire universe was hushed and attentive to the sublime drama that was about to unfold in the wilderness of Sinai.
In view of the vivid circumstances surrounding the Divine Revelation, it is most disconcerting that its substance rapidly dissipated. For shortly after Sinai, the Hebrews create a golden calf and Moses, learning of it from atop the mountain, shatters the tablets containing the Ten Commandments. What a magnificent beginning! What an abysmal ending!
Where in lay the difference between the first set of tablets, which were broken, and the second set, which Moses later fashioned and which remained whole? Why were the latter more enduring? Why were they received in sincerity by the Jewish nation?
Nothing More Beautiful Than Modesty
Rashi comments that the first tablets, which were given amid tumult, thundering and a great assembly, were affected by the evil eye, whereas, the second tablets, which were given under more modest circumstances, were able to endure. There is nothing more beautiful than modesty.
But while this teaching of Rashi contains a very important moral lesson, it still does not fully explain the circumstances surrounding the second tablets. Why did God command Moses to hew these second tablets instead of giving them to him ready-made from Above, as He had with the first pair?
And if it was, for some reason, essential that Moses hew them by himself, could he not have done so at the top of the mountain? Why did God instruct him to hew them at the foot of the mountain and carry them up to the top? It is precisely this incidentthat explains the durability of the second tablets.
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