Three months after leaving Egypt, Israel camped at the foot of Mount Sinai. There God spoke the ten commandments aloud to the whole assembly “out of the middle of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice. He added no more” (Deuteronomy 5:22).
The people were terrified. They begged Moses to speak to them instead, and Moses answered, “Don’t be afraid, for God has come to test you, and that his fear may be before you, that you won’t sin” (Exodus 20:18-20).
Written with the finger of God
God then called Moses up the mountain to receive “the stone tablets with the law and the commands that I have written” (Exodus 24:12). When God finished speaking with him, he gave Moses “the two tablets of the covenant, stone tablets, written with God’s finger” (Exodus 31:18).
Broken at the foot of the mountain
While Moses was on the mountain, the people made a golden calf — breaking the first two commandments before the tablets had even reached the camp. When Moses saw the calf and the dancing, he threw the tablets down and broke them beneath the mountain (Exodus 32:19).
Written again
God did not abandon the covenant. He told Moses to cut two new tablets, and Moses stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; “he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Exodus 34:28). Moses later recalled that God wrote them “according to the first writing” (Deuteronomy 10:4).
The same law, broken by the people and given again by God, points forward to a better covenant — one in which God promises, “I will write it in their heart.”