The Golden Calf (Exodus 32)

[And with the zenith, like the creation of man, comes rebellion and the fall. Chapters 32-34 interrupt the chronology of events of the tabernacle to illustrate the threat to Israel’s faith posed by the dominance of idolatry and idolatrous thinking in the minds of the people of Israel while they were at Mount Sinai. They will break the Ten Commandments before they even receive them!]

[40 days][who had not been told how long he would be up on Sinai][in hostility against] to Aaron [the natural leader in Moses’ absence] [who protect us][The real problem, that plagues Christians today, is the inability to see that the spiritual world is primary to and in control of the physical world.]1 When the people saw that Moses delayed gathered themselves together . to come down from the mountain, the people As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” [They have a lack of faith, expressed in their unwillingness to wait. Does Aaron do what he does next out of fear, peer pressure, well-being, acceptance, or lack of faith?] 2 So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters [but not the men], and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” [Apparently Aaron did a great job in crafting this idol and the people gave their immediate approval.] 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” [Aaron is trying to salvage his misstep and identify this golden calf idol with Yahweh, the Lord.] 6 And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play [meaning shouting, singing, and dancing] and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us

7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly [God assesses their loyalty and covenant fidelity as fragile] out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it [breaking the second commandment, as if now God could finally be properly worshipped] and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” [The people are still wed to their culture. They are Egyptian Israelites and not yet God’s Israelites.] 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” [While God has given up on Israel, he has not given up on Moses. Is this said to test Moses and his ego?]

11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. [Moses does not want to become the new Abraham nor ease his burden by getting rid of these people in an instant.] 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” 14 And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. [Abraham had appealed to God’s faithfulness and character in Genesis 18 on behalf of the city of Sodom. Moses expected his prayer to be met with compassion, and it was as God acknowledges they are “his people.”]

15 Then Moses turned [from looking up at God] and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony [God’s copy and the people’s copy] in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. 16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. [The writing filled the tablets. The rest of the law was explanatory of the Ten Words/Commandments. These tablets were the locus of covenant expectations.] 17 When Joshua [who had been waiting for Moses in a prearranged location] heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” [Why would Israel’s top general mistake the noise for the sound of war?] 18 But he [Moses] said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” 19 And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses' anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. [Moses did not have an impulsive hissy fit. Instead, he broke them deliberately and symbolically, illustrating that Israel had broken covenant with her God, and he broke them publically at the base of the mountain where the people were awaiting their arrival.] 20 He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it. [The original meaning is probably mistranslated. Moses did not have them line up to drink the water. The meaning is better conveyed by saying, “He put the powder in the water supply and the people eventually drank it. It went through their bodies and came out as waste, corrupted and defiled, and therefore was ruined permanently as material fit for an idol.”]

21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” [He allows for the possibility that the people coerced Aaron into doing this but nonetheless recognized Aaron has committed a horrific sin.] 22 And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” [His response is both self-serving and unconvincing. It was dishonest and indefensible. He condemned himself.]

25 And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose [were out of control] (for Aaron had let them break loose [get out of control], to the derision of their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me.” [Moses asks the people to choose God or the idol. The truth of salvation is at stake. Everyone is given a chance to repent and reestablish their loyalty to God.] And all the sons of Levi gathered around him [suggesting Aaron the others quickly repented and took advantage of this act of grace]. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel [the following is God’s idea, not Moses’], ‘Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp [finding out who was returning to the Lord and who was not], and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.’” 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. [The Levite clergy showed their faithfulness to God.] 29 And Moses said, “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day.”

30 The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin [to get them covered/forgiven].” 31 So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. [Moses does not try to minimize anything.] They have made for themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” [Moses is willing to lose his own eternal life if the people’s sin could not be forgiven. His offer is selfless and noble, foreshadowing not only the need for a savior but the Savior himself.] 33 But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. [This verse represents a statement of divine practice and a standard of justice that God maintains. Eternal life is not automatic without a person’s sins being forgiven and is one of the Bible’s strongest statements about the absolute necessity for the forgiveness of sins. Therefore it is implicitly messianic even if not overtly so. If one’s name is in God’s book—also known as The Book of Life—at the time of judgment, that person will live forever in heaven. If not, that person will be destroyed in hell. John calls this book the “book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the World” (Rev 13:8) as a way of indicating that it is through Christ alone that eternal life is obtained.] 34 But now go [continuing on with the exodus plan; God is still faithful and will lead them], lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.”

35 Then the Lord sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made. [This was a small-scale warning, a sample of God’s wrath, by no means the actual full punishment for abandoning the covenant. That would ultimately come in the exile to Babylon in 586 BC, when Israel’s sin was visited.]