Rembrandt's Moses with the Tablets of the Law, painted in 1659 and now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, shows an old man holding two stone tablets above his head. His arms are extended upward. The tablets tilt toward us. On their surface, in small neat rows, Hebrew letters. You can read them: You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
The Face Above the Tablets
Moses' face is above the stones. What is striking is that the face is not enraged. It is calm, tired, almost resigned. The eyes are dark and turned slightly down.
Two Readings
Exodus 32 tells the first time Moses descended with the tablets. He came down to find the people dancing before a golden calf, and in fury threw the tablets to the ground, shattering them. Most painters of this scene showed the rage — face twisted, arms about to swing.
Exodus 34 tells the second descent. After God pardoned the people, Moses went up again, was given a new set, and came down with them a second time. This descent was quieter. No calf. No rage.
Which one is Rembrandt painting? Art historians have argued for centuries. Some say the first — the tablets raised to be smashed. Others say the second — the tablets raised to be read. The face, depending on your reading, is either the face of a man about to break what he is holding, or the face of a man who has watched his first effort destroyed and has come down again with the same words.
What the Verse Names
"And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount."
Moses' anger waxed hot. The Hebrew verb is waychar — the same root as charon, "burning." It is an idiom of fire. But Rembrandt refuses to paint the fire. He paints, instead, the stillness in a face that has just seen what the people are doing, and has not yet decided what to do with the stones.
This is the painter's choice. To hold the verse on the breath before the breaking. To leave the outcome ambiguous, because for a man who has been on the mountain, the decision to break or to show is not obvious. The tablets are his hands' work and God's letters. To throw them is to reject both.
The Forty Seconds
Write the verse out by hand — just the phrase: he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. Forty seconds. In that time you feel what the painting refuses to resolve. That anger is not always triumphant. That the man carrying the law sometimes wishes he could put it down. That Rembrandt trusted us to hold both possibilities without choosing.
The tablets are in the air. The face is calm. The letters are still readable.