The Finger That Writes: From Sinai's Stone to the Dust Beneath the Adulteress
Old Testament: Exodus 31:18
And the Lord, when he had ended these words in mount Sinai, gave to Moses two stone tables of testimony, written with the finger of God.
Old Testament, also: Daniel 5:5
In the same hour there appeared fingers, as it were of the hand of a man, writing over against the candlestick upon the surface of the wall of the king's palace: and the king beheld the joints of the hand that wrote.
New Testament: John 8:6-8; Luke 11:20
... Jesus bowing himself down, wrote with his finger on the ground... When therefore they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said to them: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again stooping down, he wrote on the ground... if I by the finger of God cast out devils, doubtless the kingdom of God is come upon you.
The connection
Divine writing that judges appears twice in the Old Testament texts gathered here, though only one of the two is credited by name to God's own finger. The Law is carved into stone at Sinai, explicitly "written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18), standing forever as the standard sin is measured against. Baltasar's sentence, appearing on the palace wall the very night it destroys him, comes from "fingers, as it were of the hand of a man" (Daniel 5:5), the text says only that God sent the hand (5:24), only that it judges. Christ names His own works by this same title, "the finger of God" (Luke 11:20), and then, confronted with a woman guilty under the very Law that finger once wrote, does something neither Sinai nor Babylon prepared anyone for: He writes again, but in dust, in something no one could ever read afterward, and lets it stand for mercy instead of a sentence.
Moral sense
Augustine reads the material itself as the whole point: "The law was written with the finger of God; but written on stone because of the hard-hearted. The Lord now wrote on the ground, because He was seeking fruit." One by one, the accusers examine their own conscience under that gaze and leave, until, as Augustine puts it, "the two were left alone, the wretched woman and Mercy" (Tractate 33 on John).
Anagogical sense
What the finger of God once carved permanently in stone, and a hand sent from God once wrote on a palace wall (Daniel 5:24), it now writes on something that does not last, because what is finally written down about this sin is nothing at all: "Neither will I condemn thee." The commandment remains engraved forever; the record of this particular failure to keep it is left in sand, gone with the next wind. CCC 700 draws the same line forward again: the finger that inscribed stone now writes instead "on tablets of human hearts."
The Fathers
St Augustine, Tractate 33 on the Gospel of John, on why Christ wrote on the ground: "For the law was written with the finger of God; but written on stone because of the hard-hearted." He puts the two writings side by side, the finger on the tablets and the finger in the dust, which is the connection this entry draws.
Warrant
Checked in the Greek, and both halves of the figure carry: daktylos, finger, stands at Exodus 31:18 and Daniel 5:5 in the Septuagint and at John 8:6 and Luke 11:20, and grapho, to write, stands at Exodus 31:18 and Daniel 5:5 and again at John 8:6 and 8:8. The finger and the writing are the same two words at every point in the chain.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 700.
The verses
Exodus 31:18 · Daniel 5:5 · John 8:6 · John 8:7 · John 8:8 · Luke 11:20
