Deuteronomy 10 - Introduction

The Hewing of New Tables of Stone and the Making of the Ark

The account of the former is extracted verbally from Exodus 34:1-4, JE, which adds other details, but has now no mention of the making of the Ark. It is, however, more than probable and -practically certain" that D derived his words about the Ark, equally with those on the tables, from the original text of JE, and that they were afterwards omitted from JE -by the compiler as inconsistent with the more detailed particulars, which he preferred, contained in the narrative of P." So Driver, Exodus(in this series), p. 366. For the full argument see that note and also the introd. to the vol., p. lxvii f., and the note, pp. 278 280, on the religious ideas associated with the Ark and opinions as to its possible origin. In addition, it is only necessary to state here that the date of the disappearance of the Ark from Israel's central sanctuary is not known. No Ark was in the Second Temple, but whether it had perished in the fall of Jerusalem, 587 b.c. (cp. 2Es 10:22), or even earlier, and therefore was not existent in the time of the deuteronomists (as may be inferred from the absence of any mention of it in the history after Solomon, and in the Prophets except for the quite ambiguous Jeremiah 3:16) is uncertain. See A. R. S. Kennedy, -Ark" in Hastings" D.B.(I. 150) and the present writer's Jerusalem, ii. 256, 306 f. Its absence from the Second Temple, in harmony with Jeremiah 3:14-18, is in curious contrast to the very developed conception of the Ark in P, which raises interesting questions that cannot be pursued here.