קול ד' חוצב להבות אש – Kol Hashem chotzev lahavos eish. The voice of Hashem cleaves with shafts of fire.
Rashbam says this alludes to the fourth day of Creation when Hashem placed the fiery Heavenly luminaries in the sky. Rashi explains that the shafts of fire refers to the Giving of the Luchos and Hashem’s method of engraving the letters of the Ten Commandments upon them. When Hashem spoke at Har Sinai, each dibur, commandment, emitted from His mouth as a flame in the shape of visible letters and words. These letters penetrated the stone tablets and engraved themselves on the stone. This provides us with a new insight into the words, Mimino eish das lamo, “From His right hand He presented the fiery Torah to them” (Devarim 33:2). Simply, this means that Hashem presented the Torah amid a display of fire and lightning. We may suggest that, according to the above, the Heavenly fire from Hashem was the medium that engraved the Luchos.
