Sotheby’s auction of the oldest intact tablet of the Ten Commandments is a moment to celebrate the laws brought down from Sinai by Moses — the most famous set of laws ever handed down — and the laws’ Author.

The version on display at the auction house on York Avenue dates from around 1,500 years ago, well after the gathering at Sinai. It was found in the Land of Israel near the city of Ashkelon after serving for 30 years as a paving stone, its immortal words smudged by toes and souls. It goes to auction on Wednesday and is expected to fetch millions.

The marble tablet weighs 115 pounds and measures around two feet in height, more or less the same measurements given by the rabbis for Moses’s two editions. The first tablets were destroyed by Moses, then 80 years old the rabbis reckon, in his rage at his follower’s idolatry in worshipping a golden calf. 

The shards of the original were placed in the Ark of the Covenant, which was then buried, reportedly in tunnels designed by King Solomon. The tablet being auctioned had been inscribed in paleo-Hebrew, an ancient script close to Phoneician. It was carved by the Samaritans — hence Judea and Samaria.

The Samaritan can still be found in Israel’s north, adhering to a literalist creed that hews close to the Bible but rejects rabbinic authority and Talmudic teaching. Their iteration of the Ten  Commandments — this one — eschews the admonition of “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain” and substitutes in the commandment to worship on the summit of Mt. Gerizim, near the city of Shechem. 

That is where Moses commanded the people to pronounce blessings. This is the commandment Prime Minister Netanyahu was making when, at the United Nations, he declared that a choice lay before Israel’s enemies — between a blessing and a curse. Samaritans consider the summit of Mt. Gerizim to be the most sacred place on earth, surpassing even the Temple Mount at Jerusalem. They had their own temple there.

A tally this year put the Samaritan population in Israel at around 900 souls. They claim descent from the biblical tribes of Ephraim and Menashe, and report that their priesthood dates back more than 3,600 years, to the office of Aaron, brother of Moses. The Talmud contends that the Samaritans were formed during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century before the common era. They then returned to Israel on the force of the edict of Cyrus the Great.  

The tablet is inscribed in the name of someone called Korach, an unusual moniker given that the biblical Korach fomented rebellion against Moses in the wastes of the Sinai desert during the 40 years. One of the auction house’s Judaica specialists, Sharon Liberman Mintz, though, tells the Sun that according to tradition Korach’s sons made themselves useful as singers at the Temple. Ms. Liberman Mintz, gazing at the tablet, ventures that “stones make covenants.”