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In Exodus 34, God tell Moses to cut new tablets like the first ones, which Moses had smashed. Rabbinic tradition in tractate Shabbat interprets the word for “which you smashed“ as God telling Moses well done for breaking them, agreeing with his decision.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 34:1
Hebrew Bible
1 The Lord said to Moses, “Cut out two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you smashed. 2 Be prepared in the morning, and go up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and station yourself for me there on the top of the mountain. 3 No one is to come up with you; do not let anyone be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks or the herds may graze in front of that mountain.”
Shabbat 87a
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
And he broke the tablets following the sin of the Golden Calf. What source did he interpret that led him to do so? Moses said: With regard to the Paschal lamb, which is only one of six hundred and thirteen mitzvot, the Torah stated: “And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron: This is the ordinance of the Paschal offering; no alien shall eat of it” (Exodus 12:43), referring not only to gentiles, but to apostate Jews as well. Regarding the tablets, which represented the entire Torah, and Israel at that moment were apostates, as they were worshipping the calf, all the more so are they not worthy of receiving the Torah. And from where do we derive that the Holy One, Blessed be He, agreed with his reasoning? As it is stated: “The first tablets which you broke [asher shibarta]” (Exodus 34:1), and Reish Lakish said: The word asher is an allusion to the phrase: May your strength be true [yishar koḥakha] due to the fact that you broke the tablets.
Date: 450-550 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
... It was a risk for Moses, a fallible and vulnerable leader, to bring those supernal tablets into the midst of a fallible and vulnerable Jewish people. But it was a risk that Moses and God had to take, lest the Tablets remain in the heavens with no possibility that anyone would ever be able to fulfill them. ... Resh Lakish said: There are times when the nullifying of the Torah may lead to the establishing of it. Thus it is said, “Which [asher] thou didst break” (Exodus 34:1; Deuteronomy 10:2), by which the Holy One meant: You did well [yishar koah] to break the tablets. ...
Salkin, Jeffrey K.
The Gods Are Broken! The Hidden Legacy of Abraham
(p. 108) The Jewish Publication Society, 2013
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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