신명기 9:17의 주석

AND I TOOK HOLD OF THE TWO TABLETS. This is also meant to be part of the chastisements. He is saying: “your sin was greater than could be borne,¹³⁸See Genesis 4:13. to the point that when I saw you being merry before the calf I could not restrain [my anger] and I broke the Tablets.” He had to mention this because he wanted them to realize the significance of the second Tablets, as he will explain [in the section that follows]. Possibly he is alluding further to the favor he did them when he endangered his own life by breaking the Tablets of G-d for their sake, as our Rabbis have said:¹³⁹Shemoth Rabbah 46:1. “It is better that you [Israel] be judged like an [unchaste] unmarried woman and not like an [adulterous] wife.”¹⁴⁰The Tablets represented the testimony of Israel’s “marriage” to G-d. Under such circumstances the sin of the golden calf would have brought a severe punishment upon Israel, like that of an adulterous wife. By risking his life in breaking the Tablets, Moses turned their status into that of an “unmarried person” and thus lessened their punishment. The second Tablets re-established the original bond between G-d and Israel.

ואתפש בשני הלחות ואשלכם, "and I took hold of the two Tablets and I flung them, etc." Why did Moses have to mention that "he took hold" of something which was already in his hands? Perhaps as long as the Israelites had not yet been guilty of sin the Tablets were suspended in the air slightly above Moses' hands so that he could not actually touch them. This may be what is meant when we were told in verse 16: "and the two Tablets of the covenant "were above my two hands." Moses had not said that the two Tablets were "in his hands." They seemed to carry themselves. Once Moses espied the golden calf, the Tablets lost their holiness so that Moses had to "take hold of them" with his hands.

ואשברם, for I had run out of strength to hold on to them. I have explained this on Exodus 32,19.