p. 9 | Twice Written - What? by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 5, 1915

Twice Written — What?

By John Norton Loughborough

THE law of God was twice written by the finger of God on tables of stone, first on stone He had prepared, second on tables of stone prepared by Moses. Of the second tables He said, “Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.” Ex. 34:1. Again we read, “He [the Lord] wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments.” Deut. 10:4.

When the apostle Paul referred to the course of Israel which led to this second writing of the law, he said: “Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” 1 Cor. 10:6, 7. This statement refers to their course when dancing a heathenish, lascivious dance around the golden calf; and it is recorded in Ex. 32:6. Only about forty days previously, they had entered into a solemn covenant with God, promising to keep this law of Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken with a voice that shook the earth, and filled them with terror of their lives.

How frail is humanity when left to its own weakness! As expressed by Paul, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” Rom. 7:18. How soon, when subject to temptation, these Israelites failed to fulfill their human promise! As Moses came in sight of the golden calf and the idolatrous dancing, “He was in a measure unprepared for the dreadful exhibition which he witnessed of the degradation of Israel. He threw down the tables of stone in utter discouragement and wrath because of Israel’s great sin before God.”

This act of Israel’s in so soon grossly departing from God, and violating their own solemn promise, while still in sight of cloud-covered Sinai, must for the moment have looked to Moses like a total failure of the whole scheme to rescue that people from sin. Indeed, it would be a failure, if they were to have no other aid but human. The breaking of the first tables might be taken as a fit representation of such a failure.

But the scheme of obedience to God’s law is not a failure; for the Lord told Moses to hew two tables like the first, and He would write the same Ten Commandments on these humanly prepared tables. By His writing upon the second tables, we have a fit illustration of how obedience to God may be obtained. When the human heart, like the second tables, is submitted to God, He says, He “will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes.” Eze. 36:26, 27. Then it is that God “worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Phil. 2:13.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.