The Lord said to Moses: come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction. The tablets of stone are the permanent, written form of what the people heard spoken and Moses wrote down. God writes them Himself — Exodus 31:18 says written by the finger of God. The permanence of stone versus the perishability of oral tradition or papyrus gives the covenant law the most durable form available. 2 Corinthians 3:3 contrasts these stone tablets with the new covenant written not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts — the progression is from the externally durable to the internally transformative. Both forms are God's writing; what changes is the medium.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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