The
Tablets of Stone,
Stone Tablets,
Tablets of Law, or
Tablets of Testimony (in
Hebrew ????? ?????
Luchot HaBrit - "the tablets [of] the covenant") in the
Bible, were the two pieces of special stone inscribed with the
Ten Commandments when
Moses ascended
Mount Sinai as recorded in the
Book of Exodus.
Exodus 3118 refers to the tablets as the "Tablets of Testimony" because they give insight into the nature of God.
According to the Bible, there were two sets the first, inscribed by God, were smashed by Moses when he was enraged by the sight of the Children of Israel worshiping the Golden Calf; and the second, later cut by Moses and rewriten by God.
According to traditional teachings of Judaism in the Talmud, they were made of blue sapphire stone as a symbolic reminder of the sky, the heavens, and ultimately of God's throne. Both the first shattered set and the second unbroken set were stored in the Ark of the Covenant (the aron habrit in Hebrew).
The tablets are popularly described as semi-flat rounded off rectangles but this understanding has little basis in religious tradition. According to rabbinic tradition, they were rectangles, with sharp corners.[1] Also according to tradition, the words were not engraved on the surface, but rather were bored fully through the stone.
