Imagine this: You’re the leader of a group of former-slaves-turned-immigrants who are on the cusp of taking the land promised to their ancestors four hundred years ago. After a long hike up the mountain to receive the Law containing the conditions of the relationship between God and man, you come down from the mountain to find the people in gross violation of the most important of those rules.
What do you do?
If you’re Moses, you take the commandments that were literally etched in stone, and bash them against the rock.
Why do you do that? That depends on who you ask. Some people argue that Moses simply acted out of anger. After all, it wasn’t just that they broke the commandment, but that they demeaned God to the form of an idol. And, oh yeah, your brother was the ringleader.
That would make anyone livid. If that is the only reason that Moses broke the tablets, then it is divine anger at its best, right up there with Jesus flipping over tables of the moneychangers (Matthew 21:12;13; Mark 11:15-18). The Psalmist argues that if Moses hadn’t acted, Israel would’ve been destroyed (Psalm 106:23).
There’s another explanation that’s slightly less mainstream but way more interesting. According to at least one commentator, when Moses came down and saw the people engaged in idolatry, the letters of the Law literally flew off the stone tablets. Because the stone tablets weren’t miraculous and now just made of stone, they became heavy and Moses simply dropped them.
The main problem with that line of reasoning is that Deuteronomy 9:17 has Moses breaking them deliberately. When Moses relays this story, he says he did so “before their eyes”—ostensibly, to make a statement.
What was that statement? That the covenant, because of their actions, had been broken. No more tablets, no more covenant.
But rather than allow God to destroy the Israelites, Deuteronomy 9:18 has Moses fasting and praying to intervene on behalf of the people. Deuteronomy 10:1 shows the effect: God asks Moses to make another one.
This passage shows the necessity of obedience to God’s commandments, while at the same time underscoring the divine anger and disappointment when they are broken. Do we take it as serious as Moses?