These have a special place as having been written on the tables of stone by “the finger of God” (Ex. 31:18). Deuteronomy 10:4 (margin) reads “the ten words,” and they are often referred to as the DECALOGUE. They are also called “the words of the covenant,” in Exodus 34:28. It was after hearing these ten commandments rehearsed by Moses that the Israelites said to him, “Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say; and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee; and we will hear it and do it” (Deut. 5:27). The two stones are also called the “tables of the testimony” (Ex. 34:29), and they were laid up in the ark of the covenant, (Ex. 40:20; 1 Kings 8:9; Heb. 9:4); over which were the two cherubim as guardians of God’s rights together with the mercy-seat.
The giving of the two stones to Israel by God (who, though gracious and merciful, would by no means clear the guilty) amid a measure of glory is referred to by Paul, when he describes the commandments written in letters thereon as “the ministration of death”; in contrast to which he speaks of the glory of the ministration of the Spirit (that is, of Christ, for the Lord is that Spirit), and of the ministration of righteousness: it is the story of man’s failure, and of God’s righteousness available to the believer through Christ (2 Cor. 3:7-11).