Tablets of the Law

Stone slabs or tablets on which Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. When Moses brought them down from his meeting with God on Mount Sinai, he found the Israelites worshipping a gold calf they had made in the forty days while he had been gone. In anger, Moses threw down the tablets, breaking them. God called Moses to cut two new slabs of stone and take them up the mountain to receive the Law again. This time Moses put the tablets of the Law into the ark of the covenant, which was placed in the tabernacle and later in King Solomon’s temple. The tablets were lost forever when the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.