Tablets of the Covenant
Two tablets side by side for the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, usually placed above the ark in a synagogue.
Meaning
In the Book of Exodus, Moses receives the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone, smashes them when he sees the people worshipping the golden calf, and is told to cut a second pair; the tablets were kept in the Ark of the Covenant. As a symbol, the two tablets usually stand over the ark in a synagogue, inscribed with the first ten letters of the alphabet or the first words of the commandments. It would be rare today to visit a synagogue without seeing them, the historian Jenna Weissman Joselit writes.
Origin and history
The familiar shape, two tablets with rounded tops joined side by side, came from Christian art. The art historian Ruth Mellinkoff called it a “medieval Christian invention”, and Rabbi Ari Zivotofsky, writing in the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Action, notes that the earliest surviving rounded tablets are in an 11th-century manuscript. Until the Middle Ages Jews rarely drew the tablets at all. Christians used them as a sign of Judaism first: Henry III of England, who ruled from 1216 to 1272, made Jews wear a badge in the shape of two tablets. Zivotofsky dates their use as a Jewish symbol to about the 15th century.
In New York in 1850 the tablets divided a congregation. Anshi Chesed dedicated its new synagogue with the Ten Commandments in a circular stained-glass window, one commandment to a pane. Members objected, and about a year later a traditional pair of round-topped tablets in Italian marble was put above the ark.
Rounded or square
Jewish tradition describes the tablets as rectangular blocks, each 6 handbreadths high, 6 wide and 3 thick. Most synagogues use the rounded form without objection, but the Lubavitcher Rebbe would not let his institutions put rounded tablets on their stationery, according to Jewish Action.
Where are the tablets now?
No one knows. The tablets were kept in the Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark "was not in evidence during the period of the Second Temple", the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes. Jewish tradition gives several answers: that the Ark was taken to Babylon when the First Temple fell, that it was hidden beneath the Temple, or that King Josiah, foreseeing the destruction, hid it "with the broken tablets" (Yoma 52b). The Second Book of Maccabees says the prophet Jeremiah sealed the ark in a cave on the mountain from which Moses saw the promised land, and that "the place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again".
Read next
- Next in Jewish symbolsShofarA ram’s horn blown like a trumpet in Jewish worship, above all on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsTumi (ceremonial knife)A ceremonial knife with a half-moon blade from the north coast of ancient Peru. The gold tumis of the Sicán (Lambayeque) culture carry a god on the handle, often identified as Naylamp, the dynasty’s mythical founder. The Tumi de Oro was declared a pre-Columbian symbol of Peru in 1981.
See also
Star of David, Menorah, Chai, Hamsa, Hanukkiah.
Sources
- Tablets of the Law, Encyclopaedia Judaica, Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, entry
- The Ten Commandments: The Symbol That Split the Synagogue, Jenna Weissman Joselit, Union for Reform Judaism (ReformJudaism.org), essay
- What’s The Truth About… the Luchot?, Ari Z. Zivotofsky, Jewish Action, Orthodox Union, article
- Ark of the Covenant (Encyclopaedia Judaica), Encyclopaedia Judaica (Harry Freedman), Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, entry “Ark of the Covenant”
- 2 Maccabees 2 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition), 2 Maccabees 2:4–8, Bible Gateway, 2 Maccabees 2:5–7
The same shape elsewhere
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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