The Second Tablets and the First Day of Atonement

After the tablets were broken Moses ascended twice more for forty days each—eighty days of pleading: first to plead for forgiveness, then, from the new moon of Elul, to receive new tablets. Between the ascents came the conversation tradition treats as the summit of revelation. Moses asks to be shown the divine glory and is told that no one may see the face, but he will be placed in a cleft of the rock while it passes by. Then the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy were pronounced—the Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in kindness and truth—words that became the core of the penitential liturgy. This time Moses himself carved the stone: the first tablets were entirely God's work, the second a joint one. On the tenth of Tishrei he came down with the new tablets and a single word, salachti, I have forgiven, as you asked. His face shone so brightly that he veiled it. That day was set as the day of atonement forever.

Here the chronologies differ not by years but by a century. Seder Olam Rabbah places the Exodus in 1313 BCE. The prevailing academic date is the thirteenth century, the time of Ramesses II: its firm anchor is the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah of 1208 BCE, the first mention of Israel outside the Tanakh, where Israel is already in Canaan. A minority of scholars holds to the fifteenth century, reckoning by the plain count of I Kings 6:1 — four hundred and eighty years from the Exodus to Solomon's Temple. The timeline shows the prevailing dating.