When Moses is given the Ten Commandments they are written on two tablets:

And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. (Deuteronomy 4:13)

Why are the Ten Commandments written on two tablets? Was one tablet not big enough for God’s handwriting? Or did God give Moses two copies of the Law, one tablet being a duplicate of the other?

Two Witnesses

Firstly, we must understand that God always requires the testimony of at least two legal witnesses.

On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deuteronomy 17:6)

The book of Deuteronomy itself is a “second testimony” of the Law (deutero-nomos meaning “second law”), repeating what was given to the Israel whose bodies fell in the wilderness.

A legal case will fail if the testimony of the witnesses does not corroborate, as was the case in the trial of Jesus. It seems the Father and the Son were two witnesses against the tower of Babel. The angel of the Lord sent two angels as witnesses into Sodom. And Israel herself saw her unfaithful spies slain, leaving only two faithful witnesses of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb.

The Ten Words are referred to as a “testimony”:

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. (Exodus 32:15)

So the tablets of the Law are “two witnesses” with a corroborated testimony, and we should notice that even these two tablets were given twice due to Israel’s idolatry. The tablets themselves suffered a “death and resurrection”, the second set being a prefigurement of every future “new covenant,” including the one predicted by Jeremiah and fulfilled in Ezra/Nehemiah and Haggai/Zechariah.

Because the tablets of the Law agreed, those who swore to keep the Law could be punished, excommunicated, or executed for breaking it.

A Complementarian Covenant

Ray Sutton attempts to fit the ten words to the five-fold Covenant pattern found everywhere in the Torah, as outlined in his groundbreaking book, That You May Prosper (p. 214).

Although numbers 1 and 5 seem to fit the Covenant pattern very well, Sutton has to go to great lengths to make the others relate to it. Also, his book sees the Covenant process as a linear progression, rather than a “there and back again,” as the Bible Matrix shows. With the matrix in mind, we can see this twofold “head and body” progression in the Ten Words.

Being very familiar with the “above, beside, below” movement of the Bible Matrix (also found in James Jordan’s excellent essay on slavery), when I came across another possibility for the arrangement of the Ten Words, even though it made no reference to the Covenant structure or the Bible Matrix, I could see immediately that it corresponded very well.

The alternate arrangement is by Moshe Kline, a Jewish scholar who follows the “scroll” division of the commandments (as did Augustine). This means that our first two are combined into one, and our last is divided into two. This sounds strange until we realize that not only are the Ten Words a double witness, they are an Adam and an Eve horizontally, and God, Mankind and the Future vertically.

If we read the laws as the warp and weft in fabric, we have “Adamic” laws as 1 3 5 7 9 (odd numbers) and “Evian” laws as 2 4 6 8 10 (even numbers). multiples of two – the Bride always “multiplies”

So, the structure works from above to beside to below (from God, through fellow man, down to offspring, that is, past to present to future), and it follows the fivefold Covenant pattern:

You might notice that this is also a slightly truncated version of the Creation Week, since the “mediating veils” are removed. There is no “removal of sin” at Passover (Day 2) or Atonement (Day 6), which things correspond to Circumcision and Baptism. Adam and Eve are entirely naked before heaven at every point. Not only this, but they have unobstructed access to the Garden (Transcendence) and the World (Succession) from the Land.

Ten Fingers

The Ten Words were written with the FINGER of God. Ten Words is ten fingers, two human hands, instruments of righteousness or unrighteousness. When Jesus broke bread, He would have used all ten fingers to tear it, picturing His imminent death under the curse of the Law. We should remember this whenever we break bread.

“And Moses threw the tablets out of his hands…” (Exodus 32:19)

The theft in the Garden of Eden was carried out with two hands, the hand of Eve and then the hand of Adam, five fingers each. If the Adam/Eve, priest/people idea is strange, it is simply an expression of the totus Christus in Man and Woman at every level, from the Sanctuary to the Household to the Nations.

Also, the High Priest made two approaches to the Most Holy on the Day of Atonement, once for the priesthood and once for the people. This is recapitulated in Daniel 7, which predicts Jesus’ ascension into the glory cloud as “head,” then four decades later returning “in like manner” for the sacrificial “body,” the firstfruits martyrs.

We also see this in Abraham, who entered the land to sacrifice Isaac (firstfruits/priesthood) and then again to bury Sarah (offspring/people).

When the sin of any culture is fullgrown, it is thus “ten fingered” (priesthood and kingdom corrupted) it has become military, a swarm (the fullness of Day 5). God sends prophets (Day 5/Trumpets), and then acts through mediators (Day 6/Atonement/Sanctions) to save a remnant, and secure for them the future, historical continuity (Day 7/Succession).

Filthy Lucre

Finally, if this arrangement of the Ten Words is correct, it should be reflected through correspondence with other events. The first is the correspondence between theft and lying in Prophetic Ministry, which was condemned by Paul in Titus 1, and appears to be rampant today. We can see this combination in the “ministry” of Gehazi (2 Kings 4), who sought to misrepresent the generosity of Israel’s God to the faithful through his sly words to Naaman, the believing Gentile.

Peter Leithart helpfully highlights another two cases, without corresponding this “unusual” combination to either the Ten Words or to Adam’s sin. He writes:

Zechariah 5:3-4 threatens a curse to those who steal and those who swear falsely. It’s a somewhat unusual combination. Perhaps the implied scenario is this: A thief steals, he is questioned about his theft, and he swears falsely that he did not steal. His theft is compounded by an oath declaring his innocence. He steals goods, and then robs the name of God by a lie.

The ultimate source of this threat, though, goes back to a specific incident in Israel’s history. Jericho was under the ban, which meant that all living things were slaughtered and all plunder was given to Yahweh. Achan, the “troubler of Israel,” stole some of the consecrated goods and hid them in his tent. Yahweh accuses him of “stealing” and “deceit” (Joshua 7:11). Because of his sacrilege, Israel is defeated before Ai, changing the psychological dynamics of the conquest against Israel. Before they got beaten at Ai, the Canaanites’ hearts were melting (2:9); after Ai, Israelite hearts became water (7:5).

No wonder Zechariah takes this combination of sins so seriously: Until the troublers are purged, Israel will flee in fright before their enemies.

Ten Tests

The last example I will present is James Jordan’s list of the ten tests which Israel failed before that generation was doomed to die in the wilderness (from the notes for his lectures on the book of Numbers). It seems to fit very well, typologically speaking:

Two Copies?

Meredith Kline argues that the “tables” were actually two copies of the same law (The Structure of Biblical Authority, pp. 117-120.) This is based on the assumption that the Mosaic Covenant is either a divine “answer” to Ancient Near East suzerainty treaties, or their inspiration, and still closely related. Dr. Meshulam Margaliot writes:

To get at the peshat, or simple meaning, we must take account of the historical context in which the Ten Commandments were given. According to Ex. 19, this was done in the course of establishing a covenant–a berit–between the Lord and Israel. Hence, we are dealing with the text of a covenant, a type of contract between two (or more) parties. For obvious reasons, it is customary for every written contract or agreement to be issued in duplicate, each party receiving a complete copy of the agreement, contract, or covenant.

This was also the practice in the ancient Near East. The most famous example of two copies of a diplomatic agreement between two kingdoms is the treaty containing the pact made between the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite King Hattusilis III, c. 1270 B.C.E. The Egyptian copy was found in Egypt, and the Hittite one in the capital of the Hittites, in eastern Turkey. The contents of both copies are identical.

It would be reasonable for the pact made at Sinai to be issued in two copies, one for the Lord, and one for the Israelites. This practice explains why one tablet did not suffice, rather two were needed.

I believe, as Kline does, that the Lord’s Covenants were the inspiration for the pagan treaties, not other way around, not least because the same Covenant structure can be traced back to Genesis 1. However, the explanation of the need for two copies does not suffice, since in Israel’s case, both copies were kept in the Ark of the Testimony. Israel’s “copy” was the hearing of the graven words. Based on the “complementarian” structure of the Ten Words outlined above, it would seem that each tablet contained only five commandments each, because the Covenant was not merely an expression of unitarian (vertical) authority between heaven and earth (or between Egypt and the Hittites). God’s Covenants are Trinitarian, with not merely an above and a below but a “beside.” They include the relationship between Church and State, the horizontal “marriage” between priesthood and people.

Moreover, Moshe Kline argues:

that the division in the Masoretic Text (MT), which appears in the Torah scrolls read in synagogues, should be preferred because it leads to a reading that integrates all ten Words in a coherent document.

The document itself consists of five consecutive pairs of Words organized hierarchically, from the first pair, which focuses on God, to the last pair, which is limited to subjective human experience, “Do not covet.” Once this internal structure is recognized, it leads to seeing a new arrangement of the Words on the two stone tablets.

They should be seen as written in pairs across the two tablets, the first Word on one and the second Word on the other, the third on the first, etc. Thus one tablet contains the “odd” Words and the other the “evens.” This arrangement may be the literal meaning of the otherwise difficult verse in Exodus 32:15, “לחת כתבים משני עבריהם, מזה ומזה הם כתבים”, “(the writing was) written across both tablets; (alternately), on one and (then) the other, were they written.”

What is the conclusion here? That the Ten Words work not only from heaven down to earth (vertically) but also horizontally, between priesthood (Adam) and people (Eve), the left hand and the right hand. This means that their architecture aligns with the four “points” of the Tabernacle furnitures, leaving out only the Incense Altar in the centre. The Tablets taken together are a cruciform instrument of death, the curse upon Adam and Eve. The missing element, the Incense Altar, is a fragrant symbol of the resurrection, Word and Response, both vertically and horizontally, united at last in the bosom of Christ.

Zechariah’s night visions move God’s furniture around. As we saw, the instructions for the Tabernacle furniture align it with the Creation Week. And the Creation Week corresponds with the seven Feasts. Zechariah’s visions follow the Creation and Feast patterns, but the Tabernacle furniture has been shifted around all over the place.

Now, you will probably ask how eight visions can align with seven days or seven feasts. The answer is that it takes the two visions in chapter 5 to reflect the Day of Atonement. Thus:

Sabbath – Day 1
The post-captivity church is seen as still being in the grave, the Abyss, literally, “the deep” (translated badly as glen or valley)

Passover – Day 2
 The horned incense altar is reconstructed, symbolising Israel’s new eldership and worship. Usually, the incense altar is at Day 5, but here, it is this altar’s renewal that re-establishes the nation as a mediator – a Holy Place firmament – between God and the nations. This aligns with Day 2.

Firstfruits – Day 3
This feast is the Ascension of Joseph, Moses, Daniel and Christ to the right hand of God to open the mystery scroll, the Law. A command is given to the people to flee the Babylon of their hearts, which lifts Jerusalem as a new “earth” (Land) out of the Gentile sea. This New Jerusalem would be too large to enclose with walls. Her influence would extend throughout the empire. The empire was the New Canaan, resurrected after the Babylonian “flood.”

Pentecost – Day 4
The serpent/Destroying Angel stands before the throne rightly accusing the disgraced priesthood of being unclean. In a re-enactment of Passover, Israel is covered. (Note that this vision is the Passover of the feast pattern that covers the entire book of Zechariah. But as the centre of the night visions, it is the crux, the thesis, the main point of transition at midnight that allows a new day to dawn.)

As in many previous patterns, the serpent is defeated at the central point of the visions. Step 4 is the wilderness at the centre of the New Creation Matrix. Which brings us to the white stone with seven eyes.

Trumpets – Day 5
The Lampstand is always at the central point, as the eyes of God’s Law watching over His Showbread tribes, both guarding and inspecting them. But in these visions, the Lampstand signifies the witness of God’s people. At Ascension the Tabernacle is built. It is tested by Law at Pentecost and most often torn apart.

At Step 5 it is a Lampstand reconstructed. It is the next generation in the wilderness, now trained as an army, or the Tabernacle of David after the Ark’s sojourn. The angel says, however, that the conquest will not be by military might in this New Israel, but by the Spirit. The Lampstand has been moved to accent its role as the symbol of this new Israel now that the Ark was gone. The head of the sacrifice had ascended to govern heaven (Ark – Adam-light) and the body would now “ascend” to govern the Land (Lampstand – Eve-lights).

It is important to notice that Revelation also places its two olive-tree witnesses at Trumpets — the apostles, filled with the Spirit, mustering an army of witnesses before Judah was finally cut in two on her last Day of Atonement.

Atonement – Day 6
Zechariah sees a flying Covenant scroll, the ascended Ark as the first goat, speaking curses upon Israel’s hidden sins. He sees the Ark’s evil twin exiled as the second goat to Shinar (Babylon) and set on a false throne.

Tabernacles – Day 7
With a New Covenant carried out in the Lord’s court – legally – the swift horses ride out between the bronze pillar/mountains into a New Land.

Now, all this was to be able to understand the significance of the stone in Zechariah 4. The stone has “holy to the Lord”, the seven eyes of the Law, written upon it at the Pentecost victory over the serpent (Zech. 3). The angel then says that Zerubbabel will bring forth the capstone to public acclamation. Not being High Priest, Zechariah could only see inside the Holy Place in his visions (unlike Ezekiel), but even the events concerning Joshua in the Holy Place were hidden from the eyes of this resurrected nation. So, we have seven-eyed stone, a capstone and the “set apart” stone (mistranslated as plumbline because it might be the metal we call tin). Are any of these three items related?

Meredith Kline seems to think so. (See Glory in Our Midst, p. 158-159).

But Mark Jauhiainen doesn’t think so. In his The Use of Zechariah in Revelation, on p. 83 he says basically that any connection is an assumption, and that the seven eyes in Zech. 4 refer to the Lampstand (seven spirits), not the stone. So the stone can’t be linked with the white stone in Revelation 2. (I have to say this gentlemen spends a lot of time telling us what things are not, but then cannot tell us what they are! I think literary structure helps us a lot to make links where he sees none.)

What he misses, I think, is that in Revelation 4, the “seven eyes” of the Lampstand are suddenly reflected in the seven eyes of the Lamb of God. And the Lamb of God is in place of the un-mentioned Table of Showbread (John describes everything but the Table). So, where Israel failed to reflect God’s Law as the perfect Adam, the Lamb succeeded. There are now seven eyes in both the south and north, the ruler and the ruled. The Lamb has the seven spirits of God (the eyes of the Law), and also the seven horns of authority, weapons to carry out His judgment so that He might be vindicated upon His unrepentant murderers.

So, to tie this all together, the white stone is the heavenly bread given at Ascension (Israel received manna directly after the Passover/Red Sea) and broken in the wilderness. Manna was the colour of bdellium, and the stone in Zerrubabel’s hands is bedil the root of which means to divide or separate. The stone is set apart, divided, and seeing as the word has a definite article (habbedil) it makes sense if it refers to the capstone 3 verses prior.

If all this does actually hang together, we have a piece of faithful wilderness bread that is now a sanctified, shiny stone engraved with seven eyes, brought out in public (through a split mountain) and lifted up as part of a new public witness to complete the new Temple.

Are you getting my drift?

WHITSTON2