Journey of the Word

You know that wireless, portable, touchscreen device that’s smaller than a laptop and larger than a cellphone?

Here’s a question for you: Is there a “tablet” in the Bible?

Short answer: yes.

But of a slightly different kind.

Read the following verse from Proverbs 3, and tell me if you know what kind of tablet this is:

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. Prov 3:3

Okay, forget the portable computer tablet and think of a slab of stone or clay or wood used for the purpose of inscription – the tablet of Bible days.

But what is the tablet of the heart, and how do you write on it?

This idea seemed so strange to me, until I realized it is used in many other places in Scripture.

Very similarly again in Proverbs:

Keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you; keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Prov 7:3

And then the author of Hebrews twice reminds us of a covenant God made with the house of Israel in Jeremiah 31:

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. Jer 31:33 {quoted in Heb 8:10 & 10:16}

And then this from the New Testament:

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 2 Cor 3:3

But I don’t get it. What is so significant about writing something on a tablet?

And then this beautiful description:

And now, go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. Isa 30:8

So we go back to Proverbs 3 and put this thing together.

By remembering the teachings of the Word and keeping the commands of God, we chisel love and faithfulness into our hearts as a witness forever. The Truth of the Word becomes so burned into our souls that it serves as a continual reminder of the greatness and goodness of God. This is the tablet of the heart.

 [image credit: unsplash.com]