What Does Deuteronomy 10:3 Mean?
And I made an ark of acacia wood, and hewed two tablets of stone like the first, and went up into the mountain with the two tablets in my hand.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And I made an ark of shittim wood, and hewed two tables of stone like unto the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables in mine hand.THE KEY
The hand that hews the tablets also carries them: here, the word takes form through crafted matter and embodied work.
THE MEANING
Here you see the sacred carried through material and physical work: wood is shaped into an ark, stone is hewn into tablets, and the tablets travel in a human hand. The word is held, borne, and brought up the mountain. The verse speaks to you through this image of meaning taking a form you can carry.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is sacred must arrive untouched by human hands: here, a human hand makes its vessel and cuts its tablets.
THE ROOT
וָאֶפְסֹל
va'efsol
GROWS FROM
פסל
To hew, carve, or shape by cutting.
The verb וָאֶפְסֹל (va’efsol, “I hewed”) comes from פסל (pasal, “to hew or carve”). The same root names פֶּסֶל (pesel, “a carved image”), placing the tablets within a wider language of forms made by hand: what matters is what the carved form carries.
ALSO GROWS
u-fesalta: You shall hew or carve.
וּפְסַלְתָּ
Exodus 34:1 uses this form of the same root for shaping replacement tablets, linking the cutting here with the word being written again.
pesel: A carved image.
פֶּסֶל
The same root names a carved image elsewhere, showing that the act of carving can shape different kinds of objects; here, the hand shapes stone into a bearer of the words.
THE PATTERN
What is set apart is carried in material forms shaped by human hands.
And they make an ark of shittim wood, two and a half forearms its length, and a forearm and a half its width, and a forearm and a half its height.And the LORD said to Moses, Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first ones. I will write upon these tablets the words that were upon the first tablets, which you broke.But we hold this treasure in clay vessels, so that the overflow of strength may be of God and not from us.THE THREAD
And the LORD said to Moses, Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first ones. I will write upon these tablets the words that were upon the first tablets, which you broke.Both verses use פסל (pasal, “to hew”) for shaping the stone tablets. Exodus names the broken first tablets and the words written again, so the cutting becomes part of the word’s renewal in matter.
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