The First and Second Tablets
- Rabbi Jeff Fox
- May 29
- 5 min read
The Talmud Yerushalmi asks a deceptively simple question, “How were the tablets written?” After a debate about the number of commandments on each side, the Yerushalmi then goes on to share the following idea about the revelatory experience:
Between every two commandments the details and the letters [of the Torah] were written… like the Great Sea…Just as in the sea there are small waves between large waves, so too between the commandments there are the details and the letters of the Torah (JT Shekalim 6:1).
Here the first tablets are presented as containing within them the entirety of the Sea of the Torah. Just as the waves continue to crash and flow over one another, the depths of the Torah unfold over time and space. That moment of national revelation consisted of more than twelve sentences or 172 words. We were also given details and clarifications that allowed us to receive this miraculous divine gift.
The Midrash in Shemot Rabbah (46:1) shares an alternative approach:
[Moshe descended] once he secured forgiveness for their sin [of the Golden Calf] and he began to regret the breaking of the tablets. Moses said [to God], “Israel had someone to plead on their behalf, who will plead on my behalf?” The Holy Blessed One said to him, “Do not regret the first tablets, as they were only the Ten Commandments alone. But on the second tablets that I am giving you, there will be halakhot, midrash, and aggadot.”
The midrash here imagines that the first tablets were, in fact, more limited than the second. In that original moment of national revelation, God shared a simple set of 172 words. However, the revelation of the second tablets contained within them essentially the Oral Torah: halakhot, midrash, and aggadot. In this telling, the second tablets—a true partnership between God and Moshe—are clearly more desired and meaningful than the first.
There are two debates going on between these approaches to the tablets. On the one hand, the Yerushalmi and Shemot Rabbah present competing approaches to the relationship between the first and second givings of Torah. For the Yerushalmi, both the first and the second tablets were experiences of robust revelation that included interpretation and clarification. However, for Shemot Rabbah, the first tablets were more limited in scope. The second tablets were in a certain measure greater than the first because only in this partnership model did we also receive the Oral Torah.
There is a second, perhaps more subtle, debate between these two approaches as well. In addition to arguing about which divine revelation was greater, they also use different metrics by which they make their claim. For the Yerushalmi, what marked the greatness of the first tablets was “the details and the letters [of the Torah]” which flowed over the Jewish People like waves of the “Great Sea.” However, for Shemot Rabbah what marked the special nature of the second tablets was the giving of “halakhot, midrash, and aggadot.”
The theme of these essays throughout the year has been the interconnection between halakha and aggada. The Midrash Rabbah presentation of the second tablets understands clearly that revelation was only complete because it had both law and narrative. Either one by itself would have been insufficient and both are necessary. In Shemot Rabbah the greatness of the second tablets was the inclusion of the Oral Torah. The limitation of the first tablets was that they “just” had the words of the Ten Commandments with no elaboration, clarification, or debates.
Rav Gedalya Shorr (Ohr Gedalyahu, Moadim, Shavuot pg. 158) develops the ideas of these midrashim into a framework for thinking about Torah more broadly. Rav Shorr argues that the core distinction between the first and second tablets is between inductive and deductive reasoning. With the first tablets (Shemot 20), he says, we understood all the core principles of the written Torah with great clarity. We became connected to the words themselves, such that we were able to move from those “root ideas and understand all the branches” of Torah. For Rav Shorr, that was a moment of standing “inside” revelation and making a deductive move out to the details of Jewish life.
On the other hand, the second tablets, given after the sin of the Golden Calf (Shemot 34), were an experience of standing “outside” of that peak revelatory moment and peering in. The power of the Oral Torah was about going from the details of the system toward more general principles. For Rav Shorr the second tablets demand an inductive move from “branches to roots.”
He then makes the following claim about the unique power of standing on the outside and trying to get in:
They merited this great power, the power to push away the darkness and the hiddenness in order to reveal light [emphasis added], during the [revelation of] the second tablets…the power to reveal that which is hidden. And the fact that they did not have this during the first commandments is not because they were lacking something, rather it was because they were standing inside and understood all these matters from the root. And now they were given the power to go from the branches and return to the root.
The gift of the second tablets was a robust Oral Torah—halakhot, midrash, and aggadot—that affords us the opportunity and responsibility to move from details to general principles in an inductive manner. That process and that avodah (hard work) gives us access to the roots of Torah. Through the revelation of both halakha and agadda we may “push away the darkness and the hiddenness in order to reveal light.”
When the legal system ignores its own values—its own agadda, or story— human beings suffer. If agadda is not contained and limited by law, halakha, it can be nearly impossible to ground our moral compass. When the two are able to work together and compliment one another, people are able to flourish both horizontally— in relationship with humanity—and vertically—in relationship with God.
There are places and times in the lives of individuals, communities, and the world when we experience an overwhelming sense of darkness. Torah may not always be able to bring light, but we can all try to push away some of the challenges. I pray that when Rabbis combine a wide and deep inductive approach to Torah together with a refined human ethical intuition—halakha + agaddah—we may be able to push away a little bit of the darkness.
Rabbi Jeffrey S. Fox, Rosh HaYeshiva and Dean of Faculty at Maharat, was the first graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. Upon graduation he served as the Rabbi of Kehilat Kesher: The Community Synagogue of Tenafly and Englewood for seven years. In Rabbi Fox’s tenure at Kesher, the community grew three-fold from 30 families to nearly 100. During that time Rabbi Fox also taught at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah as well as in the Florence Melton Adult Education School in Bergen County. He also served on the board of the Synagogue Leadership Initiative of the UJA of NNJ. Rabbi Fox was a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute and has also been a member of the faculty of the Drisha Institute, the Florence Melton Adult Education School in Westchester County, and Hadar.