Rabbi Tachanah, quoted in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer (chapter 46), gives us a fascinating glimpse behind the curtain. He says the tablets weren't some earthly creation, dug up from the ground. Oh no, they were celestial, "the handicraft of the Holy One, blessed be He," as it says in Exodus 32:16, "And the tables, the work of God were they."
These weren't just any old slabs of rock; they were ancient, primordial, and the writing itself? Divine. It was "the writing which was of old, 'graven upon the tables.'" But here's where it gets really interesting. Rabbi Tachanah suggests a little wordplay. Instead of reading Charuth, which means "graven," we should read Chêruth, meaning "liberty." The letters are the same, but the meaning is radically different. So, are the commandments literally etched in stone? Or are they about something more profound – the freedom that comes from following God's law? Now, you might be saying, "Wait a minute! Didn't Moses have to re-make the tablets after he smashed the first set in anger?" (Exodus 34:1) And that's true. So where did those come from? Well, the text continues, when God told Moses, "Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first," (Exodus 34:1) a quarry of sapphires magically appeared inside Moses' tent! Can you picture that? Right there, in the middle of the Israelite camp, a shimmering vein of precious stone. Moses then cut the tablets from this sapphire source, as it says, "And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first" (Exodus 34:4).
So, picture Moses descending from the mountain, not once, but twice, carrying these incredible sapphire tablets, literally glowing with divine light. But the story doesn’t end there.
Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer goes on to say that Moses spent forty days on the mountain, sitting before God like a talmid, a disciple before his teacher. He was reviewing the Torah Shebichtav, the Written Law, and repeating the Torah Sheba’al Peh, the Oral Law – all the interpretations and traditions that flesh out the written word. It's a beautiful image of learning, of devotion, and of the ongoing conversation between God and humanity.
What does this all mean? Perhaps it's about the enduring power of the commandments, their heavenly origin suggesting a timeless truth. Maybe it's about the importance of interpretation, of understanding not just the letters of the law, but the spirit behind them. Or maybe it’s simply a reminder that even the most sacred things are sometimes fragile, requiring us to recreate and recommit ourselves to them, time and time again.