What Does Deuteronomy 10:3 Mean in the King James?
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 analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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 shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.THE THREAD
And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.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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