Breadcrumb: No more smashing!

Deut. 10:1-5 talks about the second set of stone tablets. Moses smashed the first set after seeing the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. That first set, he had carried down the mountain by hand. Perhaps this is the reason that the second set was housed in a wooden ark. Carried this way, it would be impossible, or at least much more difficult, to destroy them again. No doubt God wanted the tablets to remain intact as long as possible, and Moses in fact points them out during his speech. ("... [I] put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they be, as the LORD commanded me." Deut. 10:5, KJV)