Tablets of Stone: Hewing to the Historic Record

By RABBI JOSEPH H. PROUSER

Parshat Va-etchanan, read this Shabbat, revisits the Ten Commandments, carved into stone and delivered to our Israelite forebears at Mount Sinai. Those stone Tablets are almost universally imagined today – based on medieval and modern art, church and synagogue iconography, depictions in movies and illustrated Bibles, military chaplains’ insignia, etc. – as rectangular in shape, with rounded tops. This was not always the case.

Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Moses (c. 1515) depicts the Lawgiver holding rectangular Tablets bearing the Decalogue. Artwork by Andrea Mantegna (c 1461) and Philippe de Champaigne (1648) also show rectangular Tablets. The Dura Europos synagogue – a richly frescoed Third Century synagogue in what is now Syria clearly depicts the Tablets as rectangular – free of stylized or rounded tops.

Baba Batra 14a describes the Tablets of the Decalogue as perfect squares (thus, by definition, also rectangular): six handbreadths high, by six handbreadths wide, by three handbreadths deep!

Rounded Tablets – the innovation of Christian artists – met with the approval of some rabbis, who cautioned against overly precise representations of the allegedly rectangular originals!

Whether the Tablets were rounded, rectangular, or square is a mystery… and far less important than the extent to which the Commandments themselves shape our conduct… and keep us from cutting corners as we carve out a sanctified moral and spiritual path.

Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser is the editor of “Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism.” The latest edition of Masorti was published online for the winter of 2025-26. A subscription is $18 per annum.