He gave to Moses, when he finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, stone tablets, written with God’s finger.
⛓ Read Exodus 31 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion2
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
Paul's 'tablets of stone written... with the Spirit of the living God' inverts Exodus 31:18, where the two tables of testimony were 'tables of stone, written with the finger of God.' The Spirit/finger-of-God substitution is a precise figural play, and the phrase 'tablets of stone' is near-quotation.
High confidence'The law was given through Moses' (v.17) refers to the Sinai giving of the tablets 'written with the finger of God.' The Moses-law / Christ-grace antithesis is built on the Sinai law-giving as its foil. Secure availability and strong thematic coherence.
High confidenceEcho2
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'Written engraved on stones' recalls the tables 'written with the finger of God' (Exodus 31:18), the same tablets Paul names a 'ministry of death.' Reinforces the stone-tablet motif from 3:3; medium because the stone-tablet phrasing is shared across the Sinai cluster.
Medium confidenceThe detail that Jesus wrote 'with his finger' may recall the finger of God inscribing the tablets of the law, casting the lawgiver writing afresh over against those who wield Moses' law. Low Volume and contested; the verbal hook ('finger,' 'wrote') is real but the application is speculative.
Low confidence