What was carved on the Tablets?

[michel]

What scripture states this?

I`m wondering where the list of ten commandments came from.

I know they are ten of Gods laws but how do we know it was these ten carved into the tablets?

I cannot find reference to it in the Bible nor can anyone here it seems.

Thanks though.

Hi, Linwood. The Ten Commandments were verified by Jesus Himself in Matthew 19:16-19. The Jews were well familiar with them in His time.

 

[Original Freak]

Oh...goody I got to this first...

The phrase “ten commandments” occurs just three times in the bible. Two of these are in Deuteronomy: chapters 4 and 10 tell us that the ten commandments were written on two tablets of stone, but neither chapter says what the ten commandments actually were. The other reference to the ten commandments occurs in Exodus,

The STCs are given in two places: firstly in Exodus 20 and then, slightly reworded, in Deuteronomy 5. Neither chapter refers to them as the ten commandments! The former does not give them any title, while the latter defines them as the statutes and ordinances (or ‘statutes and judgments’ in the KJV). The statutes and ordinances are not the commandments, but something distinct. This is clear from several references in the bible, among them the previously mentioned Deuteronomy chapters 4 and 10.

So if these are not the ten commandments, what are?

In Chapter 32 Moses finally brings the tablets of stone down the mountain, written on both sides.

But what was actually on the tablets? It is not at all clear. If it is everything that God has said since Moses first went up the mountain, the tablets must be the size of houses, which makes carrying them an interesting challenge....

And then finally it happens: in Chapter 34 Moses cuts two new tablets of stone, goes up Mount Sinai, and God writes on them “the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.” And this time we are told what they are, and they are explicitly identified as the ten commandments.

Actually they are rather curious. They consist of eight of the rules from the middle of Chapter 23, rewritten in a different order, one rule from all the way back in Chapter 13, long before the Israelites got anywhere near Mount Sinai, and one completely new rule which hasn’t been mentioned before!

Nonetheless, Exodus Chapter 34 is the one and only place in the bible where the Ten Commandments are explicitly given.

Here are the real 10 commandments as stated in the bible...

behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:

For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.

All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an *** thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.

And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.

Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.

The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.

Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.


I don't see anybody wanting to post these in schools?

I got the text from http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/mistaeks/tencommandments.html to save myself from typing out a long post.

 

[Bennettresearch]

Hi Freak, please quote book, chapter and verse.

Hey Linwood, this thread has given me food for thought. I had, wrongly I guess, taken the ten commandments as being quoted from the Tablets. We don't know this to be true? amazing.

What this all brings to mind is the preoccupation of the Ark with the Tablets within it possesing such great power and not what was written on the Tablets themselves. Stashed away from everyone in the Holy of Holies and not on display for everyone to see.

Good thread Linwood, I will certainly ponder on this for a while. The other posts have been most enlightening, I didn't realize the extent of the disconnection of the Tablets and the Ten Commandments. Whew.

 

[Bennettresearch]

Hi Prosecutor.

It does appear to be the representation of the Tablets in Deuteronomy. I am pondering why this is not taken as what is actually on those tablets. Why are the hidden from view? Wouldn't this defeat their purpose in the first place? Just great!! We don't know what is actually written on the Tablets!!

 

[nutshell]

I agree. I don't see what the confusion is. It's clear that God compiled the commandments and gave them to Moses.

 

[linwood]

Hi, Linwood. The Ten Commandments were verified by Jesus Himself in Matthew 19:16-19. The Jews were well familiar with them in His time.

Interesting.
I find it odd that no one anywhere in the Bible (as far as I know) took the time to state which of Gods laws were actually written in the tablets until thousands of years after they were written.
However I will accept this for the sake of argument but you must tell me ..where are the first few commandments?
They are not mentioned in mathew 19. all it mentions is.

Thou shalt do no murder,
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness,
Honour thy father and [thy] mother:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Mathew seems to be missing 4 commandments...it was ten..right?
Something about no gods before him, graven images and stuff y`know.

I would also like to know exactly how the author of Mathew knew what was on the tablets considering they were destroyed hundreds of years earlier and he couldn`t possibly have viewed them.

Thanks.

 

[linwood]

All sarcasm ignored no one has been able to tell me what was written on those tablets and back it with scripture .

I agree. I don't see what the confusion is. It's clear that God compiled the commandments and gave them to Moses.

Then you should be able to tell me where it states in the OT what was written on those tablets.
Please do so...since it`s so clear and all.

 

[Original Freak]

Hi Freak, please quote book, chapter and verse.

Hey Linwood, this thread has given me food for thought. I had, wrongly I guess, taken the ten commandments as being quoted from the Tablets. We don't know this to be true? amazing.

What this all brings to mind is the preoccupation of the Ark with the Tablets within it possesing such great power and not what was written on the Tablets themselves. Stashed away from everyone in the Holy of Holies and not on display for everyone to see.

Good thread Linwood, I will certainly ponder on this for a while. The other posts have been most enlightening, I didn't realize the extent of the disconnection of the Tablets and the Ten Commandments. Whew.

As I said before...

Nonetheless, Exodus Chapter 34 is the one and only place in the bible where the Ten Commandments are explicitly given.

It's the only place where it actually says..."The 10 commandments"

 

[linwood]

It's the only place where it actually says..."The 10 commandments"

Thank you OF.
I`ve waited a long time for someone to post that, sorry I missed it earlier.

I find it more than humorous that it was an atheist who found it.

:bounce

 

[michel]

Exodus 24:12 And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.​

http://www.theology.edu/faq03.htm​

3. If God was so inclined to "physically" write the Ten Commandments in stone tablets "himself", then why would he decide to write the remainder of the Bible through the hands of so many men over such a long period? Indeed, if he was willing to write one part, then why not write it all so that there would be no question of "his word" being preserved?

As it is, it seems there are redundancies and even contradictions in the human writings (for example, the Gospels, where the same story of Jesus is retold, but with differences in style, content, and even descriptions of the same events) which would not be present if God had simply composed the entire Bible himself.







Your question of why God did not chose to write the entire Bible, since he apparently physically composed the ten commandments is an interesting one. It is loosely analogous to the question that arrises when someone wonders why God would sometimes use angels to bring a message to someone, and sometimes come directly, or at other times use human intermediaries. Or why did God choose to talk to a certain person, rather than another, or why did Jesus heal these folks and not those -- or for that matter, why did God pick Abraham and his descendants to work through and not some other person and his (or her!) descendants. Frankly, there is no good answer to any of these questions, other than to say simply that God, being God, will pretty much do whatever he darn well feels like doing. Sort of like the story of the five hundred pound gorrilla and his sleeping arrangements.

This is obviously not an entirely satisfactory answer, but I've found that the Bible rarely offers us answers to "why" questions of this sort. It may be useful to point out that the ten commandments are the only portion of scripture for which it is claimed that God physically wrote them down, so the human instrument method seems to be normative. Of course, one must point out that the appearance in the Bible of even the ten commandments is then the result of the author of Exodus copying them from the tablets to the scrolls he was using for the rest of God's words.

In regard to the differences of style, content, and descriptions of events in the Gospels (or in other parallel accounts, say comparing 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles), such variations clearly indicate that they are the products of several human beings doing the writing, each with his or her own perspective and methods of expression. We would assume that this sort of variation was something that God wanted.

The presence of contradictions, however, may simply be the result of our limited data and understanding, not necessarily because they accounts genuinely contradict. The authors were not intending to give us history or a complete accounting of events, and so they were very selective in what they presented (notice what the author of the Gospel of John writes at the end of his work in John 21:25). One also has to take into account the differences in narrative structure between the way the ancient Jewish people wrote and the way we as westerners (following Greek and Roman narrative techniques) would compose matterials. (For more information on this aspect of your question, you might like to read the article in the Quartz Hill Journal of Theology, The Thematic Arrangement of Biblical Texts).

The link above is interesting; I am sorry, I came in on this one late.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The presence of contradictions, however, may simply be the result of our limited data and understanding, ...

Or it may be the result of human failure during the process of fabricating, transmitting, and translating fable. The Toothe Faerie is more likely than the Exodus/Conquest.

 

[Bennettresearch]

Hey Jayhawker (formerly Deut)

Nice Avatar, it looks like Ron Howard.

This is what Archaeologists are saying. No evidence in the Sinai desert of a large population being anywhere. There is much dispute about Hazor too. There is evidence of destruction but it doesn't fit with the timeline of the exodus. Even knowing what I know on the subject, I still wonder if it might be fact-based fiction. While Archaeologists are of the opinion that the Jews arose out of Canaan, there is still the possibility of a group arriving from Egypt bringing the story of Moses with them. This would later be written into the Jewish epic.

And so, I cannot argue against your "faerie tale" hypothesis, I know that most myths have some basis behind them and that for people of the Bible Like Moses and David to be such a big part of the tradition there is most likely something to base it on.

I was surprised that there was even a question about the Ten Commandments and the Tablets.