In Deuteronomy 9:1-10:11, Moses recalls the events at Mt. Sinai recorded in Exodus 32-34. Commentator Daniel Block describes this section of Deuteronomy under the heading "The Grace of Covenant Relationship."
After Moses' impassioned intercession for Israel, God reaffirms his commitment to the covenant that the Israelites have broken. He has Moses bring a new set of tablets up the mountain. God would write on those tablets exactly the same words that were on the original ones (Dt 10:2), symbolic of the fact that God had completely forgiven his people.
One new detail mentioned in Deuteronomy 10 is the fact that God had Moses bring an ark (i.e., a box) in which to store the new set of tablets. This was not the ark of the covenant, which would be built after Moses returned from this second trip up the mountain. We don't know what happened to this box, just as we don't know what happened to the ark of the covenant. But as Jeremiah stated in Jeremiah 3:16, it ultimately doesn't matter. Both boxes have served their purposes.
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