The Tablets of the Testimony   Exodus 31:18.  And He gave to Moses, when He had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of Elohim. Imagine a beautiful stone, blue and semi-transparent, engraved by the finger of the Living God. This, the rabbis tell us, is what the tablets of the testimony looked like.  The Bible never refers to the so-called ‘ten commandments’ by those exact terms.  The physical item has several names: the tablets of the covenant (Deuteronomy 9:9), the stone tablets (Exodus 24:12), and the tablets of the testimony (Exodus 31:18).  The words etched thereon are called ‘the ten sayings’ or the ‘ten words’ (Exodus 34:28 – d’varim, Strongs 1697).  They were etched by YHWH with His own finger on both sides of the stone and given to twice to Moses (Exodus 34:1, 28).  Moses had broken the first set on account of the incident with the golden calf (Exodus 32:19).    The earliest Bible translation to use the term ten ‘commandments’ was the Geneva Bible, 1585, and the phrase continued to be translated that way in the King James and forward. The sayings are split, outlining some specifics pertaining to the relationships between people and God and between people and each other.  There are the God-ward commandments and the man-ward commandments.  The rabbis teach that the ten sayings are a synopsis of the 613 Torah commandments, first codified and numbered by Rabbi Saadia Ben Joseph Gaon (882-942).   Likewise, Yeshua taught that the two commandments on which hang all the rest were the God-ward commandment and the man-ward commandment.   Matthew 22:36-40.  Rabbi, which is the greatest commandment in the Torah? Yeshua said to him, You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like to it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Torah and the prophets.   Two copies Although they are often represented with sayings one through five on one stone and six through ten on the other, we should consider the possibility that there were two copies of the same thing, both written on both sides (Exodus 32:15).  This might have been because it was a contract between two parties.  ‘I will be your God and you will be my people.’ (Leviticus 26:12)  Two copies mean there is one for each party.  Apparently God did not need a copy, so He let Moses take both copies.  Perhaps the two copies are for the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah.   The Israelites had gathered at Sinai and the listing of those words is in Exodus 20.    Moses recounts in his repetition of the Torah (Deuteronomy):   Deuteronomy 9:10.  And YHWH gave to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of Elohim.  And on them were all the words which YHWH had spoken to you on the mountain in the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.   The people had agreed to it before they heard it (Exodus 19:8).  But what happened after they heard it.  They said, Moses, you tell us what God says and we’ll listen but don’t let God speak directly to us because we may die.  It’s too much for us.  Thunder and lightning and noise and roaring and fires, it’s too scary, Moses you go.  The incident at Sinai is the only time in any history of any culture of any people when God the Father came and spoke to an entire nation of people.  It was a unique phenomenon, in Hebrew life, in any life.  The same sayings are on the tablets that YHWH had spoken in Exodus 20.  Moses recorded in Deuteronomy 10:5 and it is confirmed in Hebrews 9:4.    And I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I had made and they are there as YHWH commanded me.    Later we will find out that the stone tablets are the only thing left in the ark.  Solomon builds the temple and the ark is retrieved.   I Kings 8:9.  Nothing was in the ark except the two stone tablets which Moses had placed there at Horeb, where YHWH made a covenant with the people of Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt.    Tablets of flesh   Eventually, YHWH gave His people a new set of tablets, those of flesh, as promised by the prophets (Jeremiah 31:3-33 and Ezekiel 36:26-27).    II Corinthians 3:3.  Clearly you are an epistle of Messiah ministered by us, written not with ink, but by the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.   One reason that Paul refers specifically to the ink in this passage is because he is making an analogy between the etching of the stone and of our hearts.  Neither is written with ink, which is separate from and can be removed from paper. When something is engraved in rock, it cannot come off.  The shape of the rock is changed permanently and cannot be restored to its original shape.  So should our hearts be once, as members of the covenant, YHWH has engraved His word upon them.   The importance of the first commandment   Exodus 20:2 I am YHWH your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt.   This is critical. If you go into any bookstore, Christian or otherwise, and buy a representation of these sayings, a yard sign, or any other depiction, you will find the first commandment is listed as this:  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.  On the other hand, if you enter any synagogue which has a representation of these tablets, you will see the first word, anokhi (Strongs 595), or the first letter of this word, א (aleph).  The commandments which start with ‘thou shalt not’ start with lo (Strongs 3808), a word which begins with ל (lamed).  There is no mistaking which commandment is being referred to as the first one.  The first word in the Hebrew means I [AM]. To skip this foundation stone for what follows is poor communication.  At the very least, your message will be out of context.  If you do not know who you are worshipping, the rest of the so-called commandments are meaningless.  You have to know who YHWH is first:  I AM your God, the one that brought you up out of the land of Egypt.    Why are Christians confused and/or neglectful about this? We can only guess that it is because they have divorced Yeshua from YHWH, the so-called God of the Old Testament.  The fact is that many people who claim to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob do not know Him very well.  (This is not a judgment call on people’s salvation.)  Because they have rejected the Old Testament as being for another people and/or another time or dispensation, they worship the ‘nice’ Jesus, and the everybody-just-needs-to-love-each-other Jesus.  He’s their best friend, and there is no accountability, no holiness and no fear of God.  The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 1:7, Proverbs 9:10, 15:33).  If you do not fear God, it does not matter what other knowledge you have.  If God is just your best friend, your pal all the time, you will not fear Him.  We must know the complete reality of God through His name, YHWH, and through His definition of Himself, i.e., He took you out of the land of Egypt.  When YHWH is removed from the rest of the sayings, they are out of context and without meaning.   The second commandment is: Thou shalt have no other gods before me and thou shalt not make idols.  Three: Don’t use the name of God in vain.  What does in vain mean?  For nothing.  It’s useless.  Four: Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.  Holy means set apart, and different.  There are six specific requirements in the Bible.  Three of them are in Exodus 20. Don’t you do any work, don’t let your maidservant do any work, and don’t let your animals do any work.  In Nehemiah (13:17-22), it tells us not to buy and sell.  In Exodus 35:3, we learn that you shouldn’t light a fire, and we see that God required the man who was collecting sticks to be stoned to death (Numbers 15:32-36). The last requirement is in the New Testament, where it talks about a Sabbath day’s walk (Acts 1:12).  Although this oral law, but it was ordained by the time of Yeshua or it would not appear in the New Testament.  Five: Honor your parents.  Six: Do not murder.  Seven: Do not commit adultery.  Eight: Do not steal. Nine: Do not bear false testimony.  Ten: Do not covet.   One and six, two and seven   The rabbis of old taught that the rock was a sapphire-like stone, somewhat transparent.  Being written on both sides, they drew the conclusion that the sayings corresponded one to another.  If one side of the stone contained what we would call numbers one through five and the other side numbers six through ten, we would be looking at one and six at the same time, at two and seven at the same time, and so on.       I am YHWH your God who brought you up out of the land of egypt Do not murder Thou shalt have no other gods before me Thou shalt make no carved images Do not commit adultery Thou shalt not take the name of YHWH your God in vain Do not steal Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy Do not bear false witness Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you Do not covet   I and VI: Man is made in God’s image.  The idea of murder means in cold blood, a premeditated plan to take somebody’s life.  It does not include other kinds of killing.  If you accidentally commit homicide, that is not encompassed by this commandment and there are other places in Torah where such cases are dealt with.  If you murder a man, it is considered to be equivalent to denying who God is because man is made in God’s image.  It is considered to be equivalent to killing God.    II and VII:  Idolatry has always been considered as spiritual adultery.  Our relationship to the Lord is equivalent to a marriage relationship.   III and VIII:  Taking the name in vain is stealing the honor of God and who He is.  God is going to give you what you need.  He has confirmed that in His word (Philippians 4:19).  If you begin to think about taking something that does not belong to you, you can fall into what is called the prosperity gospel.  The perversion of God giving you everything you need becomes God giving you everything you want.  If you continually claim things in the name of the Lord, you are stealing and you are using God’s name in vain.  Likewise, it is useless to claim you are a believer if you are not.  That is also taking God’s name in vain.   IV and IX:  If you’re not keeping Sabbath, you’re bearing false witness.  Sabbath is a sign between the believer and the LORD =forever= (Exodus 31:16-17).   V and X:  Many people desire to have circumstances other than the ones that they find themselves in, including wishing that they had different parents.  This is not to condone the ill behaviour that some people have received at the hand of their parents or other authority figures.  YHWH in no way condones abuse.   If there is any way in which you can honor your parents, for anything, honor them.  But there are people with this attitude: my life would be better, if I just had the right parents, and by extension, the right boss, the right pastor, etc.  As a result, they neither take responsibility for their own actions, nor accept what they have been given as from the hand of the Lord.  Their bitterness will eventually outweigh their gratitude.  Honoring one’s parents is equivalent to honoring God.  Not coveting is equivalent to honoring your neighbor, by honoring his possessions as being his.   Yeshua and the ten sayings   Occasionally people will try to disavow that Yeshua confirmed all the commandments, especially the fourth, by pointing to the story of the rich young ruler.    In Matthew 19:16, the young man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Yeshua quotes:   Matthew 19:18  Do not murder, do not commit adultery,  do not steal, do not testify falsely, honor your father and your mother and love your neighbor as yourself.   The fact that He answers with sayings 6, 7, 8, 9 and 5 points to each of their ‘doubles’, i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4 and 10.  This is equivalent to saying, ‘do all of them, all of these ten.’    In this way, He includes keeping Sabbath, as part of the ten.   More…   Another interesting fact about the tablets is that the second tablet, the man-ward commandments, has 26 words.  This is the gematria for God’s name, YHWH.  It is a reminder that He considers the man-ward commandments equivalent to the God-ward commandments.   The tablets of the covenant were given outside the land in the wilderness, an ownerless and public place.  It is part of Hebrew tradition that the words were simultaneously spoken out in all seventy languages.  This shows first that they are not the product of any particular age, environment or cultural milieu.  They are for all people, for all times.  Second, it shows that we must be empty, and barren of ourselves, in order to receive them.     Psalm 63:1  A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. Elohim, you are my God; early will I seek you: my soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs for you in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.