These interpreters explain the contradiction between 34:1 and 34:28 by suggesting that in verse 1 God does not intend literally that He will write the second set, but that Moses will do so on His behalf. Other interpreters, however, maintain that Moses, not God, wrote the second set of tablets (see, for example, Exodus Rabbah47:2). (This interpretation appears, for example, in the classical medieval commentaries of Rashbam, ibn Ezra, and Ramban.) Many scholars, ancient, medieval, and modern, attempt to avoid this problem by asserting that the real subject of the verb write in 34:28 must be God, even though wording of the verse does not indicate a change in subject. (The Karaite biblical commentator Abū al-Faraj Hārūn ibn Faraj discusses the syntax we find here, explaining that in a series of verbs, the subject remains the same unless a new subject is introduced.) This verse contradicts the plain sense of God’s command in 34:1. The subject of the verb wrote, like the subject of the preceding three verbs, seems to be Moses. When Moses prepares the second set of tablets, however, the information our parashah provides moves in a different direction: “He was with God 40 days and 40 nights he ate no food and drank no water and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments” (34:28). The writing is supposed to be God’s, not Moses’s. The new set of tablets was to result from cooperation between Moses and God: “The LORD said to Moses: ‘Carve two stone tablets like the original ones, and I shall write down on the tablets the words that were on the original tablets you broke’” (34.1). God then directed Moses to replace the tablets. Moses shattered them before any Israelites saw them (32:19). The Israelites never had the opportunity to acquire direct knowledge of what was written on these tablets. The tablets were God’s work the writing was God’s writing, inscribed into the tablets.” These verses indicate that the wording of the Torah’s laws, or at least of the Ten Commandments, comes directly from God. descended the mountain, with two tablets of the covenant in his hand. Exodus 31:18 tells us that God “gave Moses two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone written with the finger of God.” This verse teaches that the words on the tablets were heavenly in origin. This week’s parashah contains a fine example of this tendency to bolster both views. The Torah seems to want us to find value in both ideas as we contemplate where our religion comes from. While the Torah’s own descriptions of revelation at Sinai sometimes support the presumption that the Torah’s wording comes from heaven, at several points these same texts hint at the participatory model. But I don’t this think assumption is correct. Most people assume that pre-20th-century Jewish texts endorse only the first of the two possibilities: the Torah’s wording comes directly from God the role of Moses and the Israelites at Sinai was merely to receive passively, not to participate actively in the creation of Torah. They propose a participatory model of revelation: the words we find in the Torah are human responses to God’s command. Several 20th-century Jewish thinkers-for example, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Franz Rosenzweig, and Louis Jacobs-endorse the second possibility. Or is the Torah itself the result of human-divine collaboration? If that is the case, the tradition the Torah inaugurates may allow some change, at least by those Jews of each generation who accept the Torah and live by its commandments. Where does our Torah come from? Did all the words of the Torah come from heaven, so that the Torah is a perfect divine work? If that is the case, then the tradition the Torah inaugurates is one that human beings should accept in its entirety without introducing any changes.
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