Jewish chaplain insignia until 1982 (currently there are Hebrew Letters on the Insignia)
(16) The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time: (17) it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days יקוק made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day [God] ceased from work and was refreshed. (18) Upon finishing speaking with him on Mount Sinai, [God] gave Moses the two tablets of the Pact, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God.
Zohar, Yitro 21:364-365
כתובים באצבע אלהים. הכונה בזה על דרך אומרם ז"ל (תנחומא פ' עקב) כי הלוחות נחצבו מתחת כסא כבודו יתברך, ואולי כי זה הוא שרמז באומרו מעשה אלהים פירוש מעשה (אלהים) הוא הכסא והבן, וכבר נתפרש כי יש בחינות רבות אורות הקדושה בסוד (קהלת ה') כי גבוה מעל גבוה וגו' וגבוהים וצא ולמד ממעשה הנפלא שהובא כספר הזוהר הקדוש (ח"ב נ"ב.) כשעלה משה למרום ופגע במלאך סנד"ל וכו' ואחר כך במלאך מט"ט והיה ירא מלאך מאשו של מה שלמעלה ממנו פן ישרפהו וכן וכו', והנה אמר הכתוב (דברים ד') כי ה' אלהיך אש אוכלה הוא, כי אשו הקדושה היא אוכלת כל אש זולתה.
כתובים באצבע אלוקים, "written by the finger of G'd." The Torah here describes what we have have learned in Tanchuma Parshat Eykev that the tablets had been "hewn" from underneath the throne of G'd. Perhaps our verse alludes to this with the words מעשה אלוקים, "the work of G'd (32,16)." We have explained that there are many "lights" of sanctity in the Celestial Regions as alluded to by Solomon in Kohelet 5,7: כי גבוה מעל גבוה שומר וגבוהים עליהם, "for there is One higher than the high Who watches and there are high ones above them." The Zohar volume 2 page 53 relates a miraculous story according to which Moses encountered the angel Sandal during his ascent to Heaven. He disabled this angel and subsequently the angel Mattat. The angel was afraid that the fire above Moses' head would burn him. We are told in Deut. 4,24 that "G'd is a devouring fire." His holy fire consumes every other fire. The Torah tells us here the manner in which the Tablets were written.
“It is not the sound of the tune of triumph,
Or the sound of the tune of defeat;
It is the sound of song that I hear!” (19) As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.
Moshe took the tablets and went down (the mountain), and the letters were carrying themselves and Moshe... and when the (letters) saw the instruments and the golden calf, they flew off the tablets, and became heavy. Moshe could no longer carry them, so he threw them out of his hands, as it says, "and he broke them under the mountain."
Midrash Shemot Rabah 43:1 What did Moshe do? He took the Luchot from the hand of the Holy One, blessed be He, in order to calm His anger.
To what is this compared? To a king who sent someone to betroth a woman through a middleman. She went and acted inappropriately with another man. The middleman, who was innocent, what did he do? He took the ketubah which the king gave him to betroth her and tore it. His intention being that it is better she is judged as an unmarried woman than a woman who is married.What Moshe did was the same. When the Jewish people sinned, he took the Luchot and broke them, so as to say that if they would have seen their punishment, they would have not sinned.
Wandering word of God. It has for its echo the word of the wandering people. No oasis for it, no shade, no peace, only the vast and thirsty desert, only the book of this thirst . . .
For, after all, why is it in the desert that God chose to speak? And what is the desert if not a place denied its place, an absent place, a non-place?
If God chose to speak in the desert, was it not to make all words His own, all words but an echo of His? And can we infer that silence is forever the echo of a first silence, that of the divine Word perceived at its borders of oblivion? As if only oblivion were audible? Thus, the desert acquires a significance to which we will have to pay some attention.
The desert is pulverized words of men, countries, scattered people, words which once were swooped down on by an incomparable celestial word so disturbing that the Hebrew people at first refused it, forcing Moses to break the Tablets of the Law. As if in order to be understood by the creature, God’s Word and commandments had to burst into pieces so that the pieces could make it perceptible, that is to say, human.