What Does Deuteronomy 9:11 Mean?
And it came to be at the end of forty days and forty nights, and the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.
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 it came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the LORD gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant.THE KEY
The covenant is handed into human keeping as a gift, so its first movement is from God toward the receiver.
THE MEANING
This verse places covenant before you as something received. Its words take tangible form and enter human keeping as a gift, here and now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the belief that covenant begins with human achievement: its words are given to Moses.
THE ROOT
נָתַן
natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
נָתַן (natan, “gave”) comes from נתן (natan, “give, set, place”). Here, giving and placing meet: the covenant comes into Moses’ keeping as something tangible.
ALSO GROWS
netinah: Giving; an act of giving.
נְתִינָה
This noun from נתן makes the act behind the verse’s “gave” visible as a giving.
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
This related word names what is given: the tablets arrive as a gift placed in Moses’ keeping.
THE PATTERN
Covenant is given in a tangible form and placed where a person can carry its words.
And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, two tablets of the witness, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.For this is the covenant that I will set in place with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will give my instructions into their minds, and scratch them upon their hearts. And I will be to them a God, and they will be to me a people.THE THREAD
And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, two tablets of the witness, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.The same Hebrew root נתן (natan, “give”) appears in both verses. Exodus names the given stone tables as testimony and says they are written with God’s finger: the waiting ends with covenant words placed into human keeping.
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