Scripture Daily

Context No. 1376 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 10:1-5: in context

1At that time the LORD said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets which you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.” 3So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two stone tablets like the first, and went up onto the mountain, having the two tablets in my hand. 4He wrote on the tablets, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spoke to you on the mountain out of the middle of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the LORD gave them to me. 5I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are as the LORD commanded me.

Moses recalls a moment of grace after a great failure. Israel had made the golden calf while Moses was on the mountain, and Moses, seeing it, had thrown down and shattered the first tablets of the covenant God had given him. Now, Moses recounts, the LORD said to him: cut two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. So Moses made an ark of acacia wood, cut the two new tablets, went up, and God wrote again the ten commandments, and Moses placed them in the ark, where they remained.

The quiet grace in this passage is that God wrote again. The covenant had been broken almost as soon as it was given, the people turning to an idol at the very foot of the mountain, and the shattered tablets lay as a picture of the shattered covenant. God would have been just to leave it there, to let the broken tablets be the end of the story. Instead he says, cut two more like the first, and come up, and I will write on them again. The God whose covenant had been broken did not abandon it; he renewed it, wrote his words a second time, gave the relationship another beginning after the first had been ruined. There is enormous hope in that for everyone who has broken faith with God, whose covenant with him lies in pieces through some failure of their own. The first tablets shattered is not the end. The God of the second set of tablets is a God who writes again, who renews what we have broken, who does not treat our failure as the final word but offers a fresh start, his words inscribed once more. Our breaking of faith is real, and Moses does not hide that the tablets were shattered by Israel's sin; but the answer to the shattered covenant was not abandonment. It was God's willingness to write it all again.

Have I broken faith with God and left the tablets of my own covenant in pieces, and can I trust that he is the God of the second set of tablets, who writes again and renews what we have shattered rather than treating our failure as the final word?

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