Keluaran 34:4

34:4 So Moses ¹  cut out two tablets of stone like the first; ²  early in the morning he went up ³  to Mount Sinai, just as the Lord had commanded him, and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.

Keluaran 20:25

20:25 If you make me an altar of stone, you must not build it ⁴  of stones shaped with tools, ⁵  for if you use your tool on it you have defiled it. ⁶ 

[34:4]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent has been specified here and the name “Moses,” which occurs later in this verse, has been replaced with the pronoun (“he”), both for stylistic reasons.

[34:4]  ² sn Deuteronomy says that Moses was also to make an ark of acacia wood before the tablets, apparently to put the tablets in until the sanctuary was built. But this ark may not have been the ark built later; or, it might be the wood box, but Bezalel still had to do all the golden work with it.

[34:4]  ³ tn The line reads “and Moses got up early in the morning and went up.” These verbs likely form a verbal hendiadys, the first one with its prepositional phrase serving in an adverbial sense.

[20:25]  ⁴ tn Heb “them” referring to the stones.

[20:25]  ⁵ tn Heb “of hewn stones.” Gesenius classifies this as an adverbial accusative – “you shall not build them (the stones of the altar) as hewn stones.” The remoter accusative is in apposition to the nearer (GKC 372 §117.kk).

[20:25]  ⁶ tn The verb is a preterite with vav (ו) consecutive. It forms the apodosis in a conditional clause: “if you lift up your tool on it…you have defiled it.”