What Does Exodus 32:16 Mean in the King James?
And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
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
God is named as the maker of both the surface and the inscription it carries.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the tablet and its writing under one source: the tables are God’s work, and the writing is God’s. The words and what receives them belong together in a single act of authorship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the split that treats the message as sacred while the thing that carries it is spiritually incidental.
THE ROOT
מִכְתָּב
mikhtav
GROWS FROM
כתב
k-t-b
To write or inscribe.
The verse uses מִכְתָּב (mikhtav, “writing”) twice, naming the inscription and then naming it as God’s. The root also reaches from the act of writing to script and written documents, holding together the act and the form it leaves behind.
ALSO GROWS
katav: To write.
כָּתַב
This is the act behind the inscription the verse calls God’s writing.
ketav: Writing or script.
כְּתָב
It names the visible form left by the act of writing, the form the tablets bear.
ketubah: A written marriage contract.
כְּתֻבָּה
The same root can mark a bond in a durable written form, showing how writing holds something in place.
THE PATTERN
Divine writing marks its source and its receiving surface, moving from stone toward the inward heart.
And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.THE THREAD
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.The Hebrew root כָּתַב (katav, “write”) appears here in “I will write,” joining the writing on the tablets to the writing described in this verse. The inscription opens from stone into the inward parts and heart.
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