New King James Version :
Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart. King James Version :
Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. Gill comments that the Corinthians were "manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by [Paul], so that the apostles and ministers of the word were only
amanuenses, Christ was the author and dictator [of the message]". Gill further observes that the Corinthian believers have become the "living epistles of Christ", and in general the saints (believers) acquire a "living disposition of the
soul in likeness to Him". The former are said to be "miraculously made, and not by the means and artifice of men", even that "they were made before the creation of the world", which, the Jewish writers say, were made of
sapphire, but they were broken by Moses when he came down from the mountain. Both the former and the latter were of two stones of an equal size, in the form of small tables, such as for children to learn to write, each with the dimensions of six hands long, six hands broad and three hands thick, weighing forty "seahs" (a miracle that Moses should be able to carry them). On these stones were written the "Ten Commandments", that five were written on one table, and five on the other, as noted by
Josephus,
Philo, and the Talmudic writers, and were written on both sides (). ==Verse 6==