According to the account of the Exodus, the Tables of the Law are tables hones some on which God engraved the Ten Commands given to Moïse, Their traditional figuration became one of the symbols of the Judaïsme, used in particular with the pediment of the Synagog S.

In the Bible

It is referred to the Tables of the Law in the books of the Exode and the Deutéronome

The people of Israel have left Egypt for three months and are in the desert of the Sinai. God decides to seal an alliance with him and Brace in is the intermediary. God states his Ten commands and matches them developments, the code of Alliance . Brace writes all the words pronounced by God but this one promises stone tables to him pointing out the law and the command which the people of Israel will have to keep in a trunk (Ark of the Covenant) to pose on a table and to install in a tent (the Residence). These instructions take 40 days at the conclusion which God gives to Moïse Tables of the charter, written hand of God , tables works of God , written on the two sides , writing of God .

Meanwhile, the people lost patience and confidence and turned to other gods (episode of the Golden calf). When Moïse goes down again of the Sinai Mount, carrying the two tables, it understands that its people have just broken hardly concluded alliance and throw the two tables which break.

A new alliance is then sealed between God and his people. Brace is charged to cut two new tables similar to the preceding ones on which the terms of the law will be again engraved. The book of the Exodus presents two contradictory versions: God writes again on the tables; God asks Moïse to write on the tables. Brace goes down again of the Sinai Mount with the tables which will be preserved in the Ark of the Covenant as of the construction of this one.

This episode is recalled in Deutéronome which takes again the version of the second tables also written of the hand of God

The Ark of the Covenant, containing the tables, becomes thereafter, a powerful instrument in the conquest by Israel of its territory.

In the culture

In the old East, at the time of an alliance between two powers, one laid out, in the temple of the partners, a written document having to be read periodically, it is thus not surprising that the Tables of the Law is the concrete testimony of Alliance between God and his people. This is why, the images of the tables are often present on the pediment of the synagogs.

The Christian iconography represents Moïse receiving the Tables of the Law, carrying them as an open book or breaking them on the ground.

In the Protestant temples, a representation of the Tables of the Law replaced, until the XVIIe century, the cross of the Catholic churches.

Appendices

Internal bonds

• Code of Hammurabi
• Decalog
• List of legendary objects

External bonds

• Illustrations of Gustave Gilded
• Tables of the Law in the temples Protestant.

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