Set in Stone, Carried in Wood: The Ten Commandments and the Ark After the Sin of the Golden Calf

(12) Moses said to ה׳, “See, You say to me, ‘Lead this people forward,’ but You have not made known to me whom You will send with me... (18) He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!” (19) And [God] answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name ה׳, and the grace that I grant and the compassion that I show,” (20) continuing, “But you cannot see My face, for a human being may not see Me and live.” (21) And ה׳ said, “See, there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock (22) and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. (23) Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen.” (1)ה׳ said to Moses: “Carve for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will inscribe upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered. (2) Be ready by morning, and in the morning come up to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to Me, on the top of the mountain. (3) No one else shall come up with you, and no one else shall be seen anywhere on the mountain; neither shall the flocks and the herds graze at the foot of this mountain.” (4) So Moses carved two tablets of stone, like the first, and early in the morning he went up on Mount Sinai, as ה׳ had commanded him, taking the two stone tablets with him. (5)ה׳ came down in a cloud—and stood with him there, proclaiming the name ה׳. (6)ה׳ passed before him and proclaimed: “!ה׳! ה׳ a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, (7) extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.” (8) Moses hastened to bow low to the ground in homage, (9) and said, “If I have gained Your favor, O my lord, pray, let my lord go in our midst, even though this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!” (10) [God] said: I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will work such wonders as have not been wrought on all the earth or in any nation; and all the people who are with you shall see how awesome are ה׳’s deeds which I will perform for you.

(25) When I lay prostrate before ה׳ those forty days and forty nights, because ה׳ was determined to destroy you, (26) I prayed to ה׳ and said, “O Lord ה׳, do not annihilate Your very own people, whom You redeemed in Your majesty and whom You freed from Egypt with a mighty hand. (27) Give thought to Your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and pay no heed to the stubbornness of this people, its wickedness, and its sinfulness. (28) Else the country from which You freed us will say, ‘It was because ה׳ was powerless to bring them into the land promised to them, and because of having rejected them, that [their god] brought them out to have them die in the wilderness.’ (29) Yet they are Your very own people, whom You freed with Your great might and Your outstretched arm.” (1) Thereupon ה׳ said to me, “Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. (2) I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets that you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark.” (3) I made an ark of acacia wood and carved out two tablets of stone like the first; I took the two tablets with me and went up the mountain. (4) After inscribing on the tablets the same text as on the first—the Ten Commandments that ה׳ addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the Assembly— ה׳ gave them to me. (5) Then I left and went down from the mountain, and I deposited the tablets in the ark that I had made, where they still are, as ה׳ had commanded me.

ועשית לך ארון עץ MAKE THEE AN ARK OF WOOD. I, however made the Ark first, because when I came with the tablets in my hand where could I place them?

(1) ושמתם בארון, “you shall put them inside the ark.” You shall not carry them in your hands so that you will not have an opportunity to smash them, as you did with the last ones.

(8) And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (9) Exactly as I show you—the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings—so shall you make it. (10) They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. (11) Overlay it with pure gold—overlay it inside and out—and make upon it a gold molding round about.

(1) Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. (2) He overlaid it with pure gold, inside and out; and he made a gold molding for it round about.

Rabbi Yoḥanan raised a contradiction: It is written: “And you shall make for yourself a wooden Ark” (Deuteronomy 10:1), implying that Moses alone was commanded to construct the Ark; and it is written: “And they shall make an Ark of acacia wood” (Exodus 25:10), implying that the Jewish people were all commanded to be involved in its construction. The apparent resolution to this contradiction is that although only Moses actually constructed the Ark, everyone was required to support the endeavor. So too, from here it is derived with regard to a Torah scholar that the members of his town should perform his work for him to support him and allow him to focus on his studies, since it is also the town’s responsibility to enable him to study. The verse states concerning the Ark: “From within and from without you shall cover it” (Exodus 25:11). Rava said: This alludes to the idea that any Torah scholar whose inside is not like his outside, i.e., whose outward expression of righteousness is insincere, is not to be considered a Torah scholar.

...Now this was not the Ark which Bezaleel made for the Tabernacle, because with the Tabernacle they did not occupy themselves until after the Day of Atonement, for only when he came down from the mountain on that day did he give them the command regarding the construction of the Tabernacle, and Bezaleel made the Tabernacle first and afterwards the Ark and the other articles (Berakhot 55a). It follows, therefore, that this was another Ark; and it was this, that went forth with them to battle...

Rebbi Jehudah ben Laqish says, two arks were travelling with Israel in the desert; one in which the Torah was deposited and one in which the broken pieces of the tablets were deposited. The one in which the Torah was deposited was put into the Tent of Meeting; that is what is written: Moses and the Ark of the Eternal’s covenant did not move from the camp. The one in which the broken pieces of the tablets were deposited was going out and coming in with them.

"Midrash HaGadol": Regarding the ark, it is said, "and overlay it with pure gold—overlay it inside and out" (Exodus 25:11), and regarding this, we find in the Yemenite Midrash HaGadol , whose origins are unknown to me, and this is its langugage: "And since, once it is overlaid with gold inside and out, what is the purpose of the wood? To tell you that without an evil inclination, there would be no praise for great scholars; rather, the praise is that they do more to conquer their inlination; and so it is said, "[better] to have self-control than to conquer a city" (Proverbs 16:32). And it is taught: "Who is strong? One who conquers his inclination."

(1) ועצי שטים, “and acacia wood.” Actually, the word שטים is a notrikon, an acrostic composed of the respective first letters in the words: שלום, טובה, ישועה, מחילה, “peace, goodness, salvation, and pardon.” There were some forests in the desert from which the Israelites were able to cut boards which they called shittim... Rashi claims that the shittim wood were trees that Yaakov had planted in Egypt as soon as he had come to Egypt, which the Israelites uprooted and took with them when departing from Egypt and which were used now to make the boards for the Tabernacle from...