This is one of the most haunting scenes in all of Jewish literature. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves it in its full strangeness: Moses approached the camp, saw the calf and the instruments of music in the hands of the wicked, and saw Satana — the Accuser — dancing and leaping before the people. His wrath was suddenly kindled. He cast the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. And the holy writing that was on them flew, and was carried away into the air of the heavens (Exodus 32:19).
Why did the letters fly away?
This is one of the great targumic images. The sages of the classical midrashic tradition (Pesachim 87b, c. 500 CE; Avot DeRabbi Natan 2, c. 700 CE) elaborated it. The sapphire tablets were being carried down the mountain by Moses, but the true weight of the tablets was borne by the letters themselves — each otiot, each Hebrew character, actively lifting the stone through its own sanctity. When Moses saw the calf and understood what Israel had done, the letters knew. They could not tolerate being borne into a camp of idolatry. They fled, returning upward to the throne of glory from which the sapphire had been cut.
Without the letters, the tablets became too heavy for any human arm. They fell from Moses's hands not because he threw them, in this reading, but because the weight became unbearable the moment the letters departed. The breaking at the foot of the mountain was half Moses's anger and half physics — gravity reasserting itself on sapphire no longer held up by Torah.
And the figure of Satana — Ha-Satan the Accuser — dancing and leaping among the people is another chilling targumic addition. This is not a rebel devil. This is the heavenly prosecutor, doing his job. He rejoices when humans fail because every failure strengthens his case in the heavenly court (Job 1:6-12). Moses saw him visible among the crowd — a sign of how thin the veil between worlds had become on that terrible day.
Moses's final cry — Woe upon the people who heard at Sinai from the mouth of the Holy One, Thou shalt not make to thyself an image — echoes for forty days. And then he climbs the mountain again to pray.
The Maggid takes this home: when the holy letters leave, the stones we carry become unbearable. Carry your tablets gently, and do not let the letters fly.