Bible Strands
Exodus 32:16
The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Moses holds the two stone tablets immediately after descending Mount Sinai, just before Joshua misidentifies the crowd's noise as battle. The narrative places this moment at the mountain's base, directly following God's completion of speaking with Moses.
The words — The Hebrew מַעֲשֶׂה אֱלֹהִים (ma'aseh Elohim, "work of God") and מִכְתַּב אֱלֹהִים (michtav Elohim, "writing of God") appear in parallel clauses. These phrases explicitly attribute both the physical crafting and the textual content to divine agency.
The thread — The verse's emphasis on divine inscription links to Exodus 31:18, where God delivers the finished tablets, and Exodus 34:1, where God rewrites the law on new stone. The motif of God's laws being placed within His people continues in Hebrews 8:10.
Why it lands — The text asserts that the covenant's authority derives solely from God's action, not human preparation. It requires the reader to acknowledge that the terms of the relationship are established and sustained by divine initiative.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
Cross-references
- Exodus 31:18 When 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.
- Hebrews 8:10 For 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.
- Exodus 34:1 Then 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.
- Exodus 34:4 So 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.
- Deuteronomy 9:9 When 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.
- Deuteronomy 9:15 So I went back down the mountain while it was blazing with fire, with the two tablets of the covenant in my hands.
- Deuteronomy 10:1 At 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.
- 2 Corinthians 3:3 It 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.
- 2 Corinthians 3:7 Now 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,