Exodus 32:19

Exo. 32:19. "And brake them." Moses's breaking the tables seems to signify the following things: -

(1.) That sin breaks the Law, and particularly that it breaks it as a covenant of works. The tables were the tables of the Covenant. The ten commandments contained a new revelation of the covenant of works, of which two ways of fulfillment were proposed. One was by mere man, the other was by Christ. These tables of the Law were the workmanship of God, without any hewing of Moses's, as the tables of the heart of man in innocency, wherein the Law was written, were already prepared by God, and needed not any work of the Law or hewing of legal conviction to prepare it.

(2.) Another thing signified by Moses's breaking the table was God's breaking His covenant between Him and the people, and so were threatened to be cast off from being His covenant people, (for there were the tables of the Covenant between God and the people), agreeable to Gods' threatening (verses Exodus 32:9; Exodus 32:10; see chap. Exodus 34:1).

Ibid. God, as it were, brake the tables in pieces, as disannulling all hopes of men's ever obtaining life in that way. Now this second time the tables are made by the ministration and instrumentality of Moses, who herein is a type of the gospel ministry. God commanded that the second tables should be committed to the ark to preserve them, that they might not be broken as the first were (compare Deuteronomy 9:16; Deuteronomy 9:17, with 10:1, 2). Thus the affair of the preservation of the hearts of God's people in holiness is committed to the keeping of Christ. The delivering of the tables of stone this second time is spoken of as the making of a New Covenant (Exodus 34:10). When Moses came down from the Mount with these new tables it was with his face shining, and not with wrath in his face as before. It was this Covenant that was renewed in Deuteronomy. This was a lively type of what we read of in Jeremiah 31:31; Jeremiah 31:32 (see place, and Hebrews 8:9). What is said in these places would lead one to think that Moses's breaking these tables signified the breaking or God's setting aside, not only the Covenant of works, but that old federal Dispensation by which God was as a husband to that people Israel, because of its proving insufficient through their sins to make way for a better Covenant; a federal Dispensation to be introduced by Christ, and in Him to be fulfilled and confirmed, and made an everlasting Covenant, as the second tables made instead of these were secured and kept safe in the ark.