When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone,.... The tables of the law, the same law which forbid idolatry, and which they had lately heard from the mouth of God himself: even the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you; which they had agreed unto, and solemnly promised they would observe and do, Exo 24:7, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights; and this long stay was one reason of their falling into idolatry, not knowing what was become of him, Exo 24:18. I neither did eat bread nor drink water; all those forty days and nights, Exo 34:28.