Table

The table is named in scripture as several distinct objects: the dining furniture of households, courts, and kings; the gold-overlaid acacia table of showbread inside the holy place; the altar that Malachi calls Yahweh's table and that Paul sets against the table of demons; the two stone tables given to Moses on Sinai; and the slab or tablet on which a prophet writes a vision.

The Household and Court Table

In its plainest sense the table is a piece of furniture, and the line "at my table" repeatedly carries a relational weight beyond its wood. Adoni-bezek's recollection is one of humiliation: "Seventy kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered [their food] under my table" (Jud 1:7). David's pledge to Mephibosheth uses the same image to mean covenant generosity: "Don't be afraid; for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father's sake, and will restore you all the land of Saul your father; and you will eat bread at my table continually" (2 Sam 9:7). The Shunammite woman furnishes the prophet's roof-chamber with the four pieces a guest needs: "let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a seat, and a lampstand" (2 Kgs 4:10).

The King's Table

A royal court fixes itself around a table. In Saul's household David's empty seat at the new-moon banquet is the visible thing: "Therefore he didn't come to the king's table" (1 Sam 20:29). Jonathan's protest is staged at the same furniture — "So Jonathan arose from the table in fierce anger, and ate no food the second day of the month; for he was grieved for David, because his father had done him shame" (1 Sam 20:34). The queen of Sheba is undone by what Solomon's table displays: "and the food of his table, and the sitting of his slaves, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers... there was no more spirit in her" (1 Kgs 10:5). Jezebel patronizes a counter-court the same way — "the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred, who eat at Jezebel's table" (1 Kgs 18:19) — and Nehemiah, after the return, keeps a public household: "Moreover there were at my table, of the Jews and the rulers, a hundred and fifty men, besides those who came to us from among the nations that were round about us" (Neh 5:17).

Sirach attaches a code of restraint to the same setting: "[Be ashamed] of altering an oath or a covenant, Of stretching out your elbow when sitting at meat, Of withholding a gift that is asked for" (Sir 41:19).

The Money-Changers' Tables

The table reappears as the surface of commerce that Jesus rejects inside the temple precinct: "and he made a scourge of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers' money, and overthrew their tables" (John 2:15).

The Table of Showbread

A second sense of "table" belongs to sanctuary worship. Inside the holy place stands the gold-overlaid acacia table on which the loaves of the presence are laid each Sabbath. Its making, dimensions, position, and transport are detailed in the Showbread article — "And you will make a table of acacia wood: two cubits [will be] its length, and a cubit its width, and a cubit and a half its height" (Ex 25:23); "And he made the table of acacia wood" (Ex 37:10); "and the table and its vessels, and the pure lampstand with all its vessels, and the altar of incense" (Ex 31:8); "And he put the table in the tent of meeting, on the side of the tabernacle northward, outside the veil" (Ex 40:22); "the ark, and the table, and the lampstand, and the altars" (Nu 3:31); "the showbread also [they set] in order on the pure table" (2 Chr 13:11); "in which [were] the lampstand, and the table, and the showbread; which is called the Holy place" (Heb 9:2). Solomon weighs out the temple inventory by metal: "and the gold by weight for the tables of showbread, for every table; and silver for the tables of silver" (1 Chr 28:16). After the desecration is undone, "they made new holy vessels, and brought in the lampstand, and the altar of incense, and the table into the temple" (1 Macc 4:49) and "they set the loaves on the table" (1 Macc 4:51).

The Altar as Yahweh's Table

Malachi calls the altar itself a table, and the priests' contempt for it is registered as contempt for that table. "You⁺ offer polluted bread on my altar. And you⁺ say, In what have we polluted you? In that you⁺ say, The table of Yahweh is contemptible" (Mal 1:7). The charge is repeated: "But you⁺ profane it, in that you⁺ say, The table of Yahweh is polluted, and its fruit, even its food, is contemptible" (Mal 1:12).

The Lord's Table and the Table of Demons

Paul transposes the same vocabulary into the Corinthian setting. The altar-table of Yahweh and the cult-tables of pagan banquet are mutually exclusive: "You⁺ can't drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: you⁺ can't partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons" (1 Cor 10:21).

The Tables of Stone

A third sense of the word names the two tables Moses receives on Sinai. They are the testimony, the covenant, and the ten commandments in object form. Yahweh summons Moses with them in view: "I will give you the tables of stone, and the law and the commandment, which I have written, that you may teach them" (Ex 24:12). The delivery itself: "he gave to Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him on mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God" (Ex 31:18). Their description: "tables that were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other they were written" (Ex 32:15). Deuteronomy reuses the same vocabulary: "And he declared to you⁺ his covenant... even the ten commandments; and he wrote them on two tables of stone" (Deut 4:13); "Yahweh delivered to me the two tables of stone written with the finger of God" (Deut 9:10); "the tables of the covenant which Yahweh made with you⁺" (Deut 9:9-11). The words inscribed are those of the Sinai Decalogue (Ex 20:3-17) and its Deuteronomic recital, which closes with the same formula: "And he wrote them on two tables of stone, and gave them to me" (Deut 5:22).

The Breaking

The first pair does not survive the descent. "Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and broke them beneath the mount" (Ex 32:19). His own account preserves the act: "And I took hold of the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and broke them before your⁺ eyes" (Deut 9:17).

The Second Set

Yahweh issues the replacement: "Cut for yourself two tables of stone like the first ones: and I will write on the tables the words that were on the first tables, which you broke" (Ex 34:1). Deuteronomy reports the execution: "Cut out for yourself two tables of stone like the first, and come up to me into the mount, and make you an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were on the first tables, which you broke, and you will put them in the ark. So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut out two tables of stone like the first, and went up into the mount, having the two tables in my hand. And he wrote on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments" (Deut 10:1-4). Moses descends with the second pair while his face still shines: "Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of the testimony in Moses' hand" (Ex 34:29).

Placed in the Ark

The tables are deposited inside the ark of the covenant: "And I turned and came down from the mount, and put the tables in the ark which I had made; and there they are as [the Speech of] Yahweh commanded me" (Deut 10:5). The Solomonic temple knows them as the only contents: "There was nothing in the ark but the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, by which Yahweh made a covenant with the sons of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kgs 8:9). Hebrews lists them under the same name: "the ark of the covenant overlaid around with gold, in which [was] a golden pot holding the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant" (Heb 9:4).

The Tablet for Inscription

A related sense of the word names the writing-slab on which a prophet inscribes a message for later reading. To Isaiah: "Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever" (Isa 30:8). To Habakkuk: "Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets, that he may run that reads it" (Hab 2:2).

Tablets of the Heart

The figurative extension takes the stone-tablet image and rewrites it on flesh. Jeremiah charges Judah with a permanent inward inscription of guilt: "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, [and] with the point of a diamond: it is graven on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of your⁺ altars" (Jer 17:1). Paul reverses the polarity for the Corinthian church and contrasts the two writing-surfaces explicitly: "you⁺ are a letter of Christ, served by us, not written with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables [that are] hearts of flesh" (2 Cor 3:3).