Is it a remarkable coincidence or the result of a grand creative design that many species of mammals have five fingers or toes? Apes, bears, dogs, cats and many others exhibit this unique trait. There are exceptions, however, and we occasionally find individuals with six or more fingers or toes. My cat is polydactyl with six toes on each front paw. It is remarkable that polydactylism is not more prevalent since it is a dominant genetic trait. It is possible to get by with less than five fingers, but one must adapt to this handicap.
Evidently five seems to be the most useful number. Five does have somewhat of a mystical significance in other respects. The ancient Hebrew tabernacle had a door between the Holy and Most Holy apartments in the shape of a pentagon (I Kings 6:31, RSV). The Pythagorean Society of ancient Greece used a pentagon for their monogram which was inscribed on the palm of each member‘s hand. The pentagon is the basis for the geometric construction of the divine proportion and the golden rectangle.
Fingers are so essential in everyday life that the lack thereof is a serious handicap. They are used for grasping, writing, drawing, and performing tasks that require dexterity. Baseball pitchers use their fingers to produce curveballs, sliders, and hangers; football quarterbacks use their fingers to put a spin on a forward pass; tennis players use their fingers to grasp a racket; seamstresses use their fingers to thread needles and do intricate embroidery and stitching; stenographers use fingers for typing on computer keyboards; musician use fingers on piano keyboards, violin strings, and trumpet valves.
When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai, I am not sure what kind of writing he used to write down God's instructions to Israel. It could have been cuneiform impressions on clay tablets or hieroglyphics on papyrus. I am inclined to think it was the latter since they were subsequently placed in a pocket in the side of the Ark. These writings covered a wide range of instructions concerning sanitation, food preparation, health practices, the handling of social problems, and the conduction of the temple service. Then God delivered to Moses a document on two tables of blue sapphire stone "as clear as the sky" (Ex. 24:10, NIV). This inscription was the Ten Commandment covenant, and it was too precious and sacred for God to entrust to the hand of a prophet.
When Moses descended from the Mount and found his people worshiping a golden calf, he blew his stack and threw the tablets to the ground. They were broken into pieces, and he returned to the top of the mountain to get a second copy. It was not reported as to what happened to the fragments of the first pair of tablets.
Following the battle of Desert Storm, at the bottom of a 100-meter deep crater in Iraq, the fragments of two stone tablets were found. According to the report in the Shanghai Liberation Daily paper the tablets are inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and the inscriptions are very sharp as if they were produced by a laser. Despite having undergone millennia of corrosion , the strokes of the writing remain clear and deep. "No stone mason could attain such perfection."
Since the Israelites had no knowledge of laser technology, and the evidence points to some source of high intensity light energy, is it possible that we have an actual product of "the finger of God?"
