Exodus 32: The Golden Calf
1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for 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.” 2 And Aaron said to them, “Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” 5 So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow is a feast to Yahweh.” 6 Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
"It was not yet six weeks since the people had sworn, ‘All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient.’ The blood of the covenant, sprinkled on them, was scarcely dry when they flung off allegiance to Jehovah. Such short-lived loyalty to Him can never have been genuine. That mob of slaves was galvanised by Moses into obedience; and since their acceptance of Jehovah was in reality only yielding to the power of one strong will and its earnest faith, of course it collapsed as soon as Moses disappeared.
We have to note, first, the people’s universal revolt. The language of Exodus 32:1 may easily hide to a careless reader the gravity and unanimity of the apostasy. ‘The people gathered themselves together.’ It was a national rebellion, a flood which swept away even some faithful, timid hearts. No voices ventured to protest. What were the elders, who shortly before ‘saw the God of Israel,’ doing to be passive at such a crisis? Was there no one to bid the fickle multitude look up to the summit overhead, where the red flames glowed, or to remind them of the hosts of Egypt lying stark and dead on the shore? Was Miriam cowed too, and her song forgotten?
We need not cast stones at these people; for we also have short memories for either the terrible or the gracious revelations of God in our own lives. But we may learn the lesson that God’s lovers have to set themselves sometimes dead against the rush of popular feeling, and that there are times when silence or compliance is sin.
It would have been easy for the rebels to have ignored Aaron, and made gods for themselves. But they desired to involve him in their apostasy, and to get ‘official sanction’ for it. He had been left by Moses as his lieutenant, and so to get him implicated was to stamp the movement as a regular and entire revolt.
The demand ‘to make gods’ {or, more probably, ‘a god’} flew in the face of both the first and second commandments. For Jehovah, who had forbidden the forming of any image, was denied in the act of making it. To disobey Him was to cast Him off. The ground of the rebellion was the craving for a visible object of trust and a visible guide, as is seen by the reason assigned for the demand for an image. Moses was out of sight; they must have something to look at as their leader. Moses had disappeared, and, to these people who had only been heaved up to the height of believing in Jehovah by Moses, Jehovah had disappeared with him. They sank down again to the level of other races as soon as that strong lever ceased to lift their heavy apprehensions.
How ridiculous the assertion that they did not know what had become of Moses! They knew that he was up there with Jehovah. The elders could have told them that. The fire on the mount might have burned in on all minds the confirmation. Note, too, the black ingratitude and plain denial of Jehovah in ‘the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt.’ They refuse to recognise God’s part. It was Moses only who had done it; and now that he is gone they must have a visible god, like other nations.
Still sadder than their sense-bound wish is Aaron’s compliance. He knew as well as we do what he should have said, but, like many another man in influential position, when beset by popular cries, he was frightened, and yielded when he should have ‘set his face like a flint.’ His compliance has in essentials been often repeated, especially by priests and ministers of religion who have lent their superior abilities or opportunities to carry out the wishes of the ignorant populace, and debased religion or watered down its prohibitions, to please and retain hold of them. The Church has incorporated much from heathenism. Roman Catholic missionaries have permitted ‘converts’ to keep their old usages. Protestant teachers have acquiesced in, and been content to find the brains to carry out, compromises between sense and soul, God’s commands and men’s inclinations.
We need not discuss the metallurgy of Exodus 32:4. But clearly Aaron asked for the earrings, not, as some would have it, hoping that vanity and covetousness would hinder their being given, but simply in order to get gold for the bad work which he was ready to do. The reason for making the thing in the shape of a calf is probably the Egyptian worship of Apis in that form, which would be familiar to the people.
We must note that it was the people who said, ‘These be thy gods, O Israel!’ Aaron seems to keep in the rear, as it were. He makes the calf, and hands it over, and leaves them to hail it and worship. Like all cowards, he thought that he was lessening his guilt by thus keeping in the background. Feeble natures are fond of such subterfuges, and deceive themselves by them; but they do not shift their sin off their shoulders.
Then he comes in again with an impotent attempt to diminish the gravity of the revolt. ‘When he saw this,’ he tried to turn the flood into another channel, and so proclaimed a ‘feast to Jehovah’ !-as if He could be worshipped by flagrant defiance of His commandments, or as if He had not been disavowed by the ascription to the calf, made that morning out of their own trinkets, of the deliverance from Egypt. A poor, inconsequential attempt to save appearances and hallow sin by writing God’s name on it! The ‘god’ whom the Israelites worshipped under the image of a calf, was no less another ‘god before Me,’ though it was called by the name of Jehovah. If the people had their idol, it mattered nothing to them, and it mattered as little to Jehovah, what ‘name’ it bore. The wild orgies of the morrow were not the worship which He accepts.
WHAT A CONTRAST BETWEEN THE PLAIN AND THE MOUNTAIN! Below, the shameful feast, with its parody of sacrifice and its sequel of lust-inflamed dancing; above, the awful colloquy between the all-seeing righteous Judge and the intercessor! The people had cast off Jehovah, and Jehovah no more calls them ‘My,’ but ‘thy people.’ They had ascribed their Exodus first to Moses, and next to the calf. Jehovah speaks of it as the work of Moses.” (MacLaren's Expositions)
Paul warns the Christians in Corinth: "Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, 'THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY.’ (Exo 32:6; 1 Cor 10:7) "In the prominent instance of the calf worship, they (like the Corinthians) would have put forth sophistical pleas in their own favour, saying that they were not worshipping idols, but only paying honour to cherubic emblems of Jehovah.” (Pulpit Commentary) Worship in Spirit and in Truth must be according to the Word.
Exodus 32: Moses’s Intercession for the Children of Israel
7 And Yahweh said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 And Yahweh said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed 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. And I will make of you a great nation.”
11 Then Moses pleaded with Yahweh his God, and said: “Yahweh, 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 speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” [Gen 13:15;22:17]14 So Yahweh relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.
"God's recounting the news of the golden calf to Moses gives the reader the divine perspective on Israel's sin. [God]... stressed three points in this pericope. 'These three points-
1) idolatry of the golden calf,
2) Israel's stiff-necked refusal to obey, and
3) God's compassion-
provide the basis of the subsequent narratives and God's further dealings with this people. Though a great act of God's judgment follows immediately (Exodus 32:27-35), the central themes of the subsequent narratives focus on God's compassion and a new start for Israel.' [Sailhamer... ]
God called the Israelites Moses' people... probably because they had repudiated the covenant and God was therefore no longer their God. God regarded the Israelites' sacrificing before the calf as worship of it (32:8).
God offered to destroy the rebellious Israelites and to make Moses' descendants into a great nation (Exodus 32:10). He may have meant that He would destroy that older generation of Israelites immediately. God was proposing action that would have been consistent with His promises to the patriarchs and the conditions of the Mosaic Covenant (cf. Numbers 14:12)…
In his model intercessory prayer... Moses appealed to God on the basis of several things: God's previous work for Israel (Exodus 32:11), God's glory and reputation (Exodus 32:12), and God's word (Exodus 32:13).
The reference to God changing His mind (Exodus 32:14) has been a problem to many Bible readers. The expression implies no inconsistency or mutability in the character of God. He does not vacillate but always does everything in harmony with His own character. Within the plan of God, however, He has incorporated enough flexibility so that in most situations there are a number of options that are acceptable to Him. In view of Moses' intercession God proceeded to take a different course of action than He had previously intended. [Note: See John Munro, 'Prayer to a Sovereign God,' Interest 56:2 (February 1990):20-21; Thomas L. Constable, 'What Prayer Will and Will Not Change,' in Essays in Honor of J. Dwight Pentecost, pp. 99-113; and Robert B. Chisholm Jr., 'Does God Change His Mind'?" Bibliotheca Sacra 152:608 (October-December 1995):387-99; Hannah...]
'In only two of the thirty-eight instances in the OT is this word used of men repenting. God's repentance or 'relenting' is an anthropomorphism (a description of God in human forms [sic form]) that aims at showing us that he can and does change in his actions and emotions to men when given proper grounds for doing so, and thereby he does not change in his basic integrity or character (cf. Psalms 99:6; Psalms 106:45; Jeremiah 18:8; Amos 7:3; Amos 7:6; Jonah 3:10; James 5:16). The grounds for the Lord's repenting are three: (1) intercession (cf. Amos 7:1-6); (2) repentance of the people (Jeremiah 18:3-11; Jonah 3:9-10); and (3) compassion (Deuteronomy 32:36; Judges 2:18; 2 Samuel 24:16[; 1 Chronicles 21:15]).' [Note: Kaiser, "Exodus," p. 479.].” (Expository Notes of Dr. Thomas Constable)
Evening Repost:
Exodus 32: Destruction of the Tablets of the Testimony... and the Idol
15 And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. 16 Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.
"And the tables were the work of God,.... And not of angels or men; the stones were made and formed by God into the shape they were: and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables; the letters in which the law was written were of his framing, devising, and engraving; and this was to show that this law was his own, and contained his mind and will; and to give the greater dignity and authority to it, and to deter men from [changing or] breaking it." (Gill's Exposition)
"It is significant that the tablets were written by God's direct hand. All law and morality must come from God's standard and character, or be up to the opinion or changing values of men.” (David Guzik)
17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 But he said: “It is not the noise of the shout of victory, nor the noise of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing I hear.”
19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.
"While Moses was in the cloud, as in the presence-chamber, Joshua continued as near as he might, in the anti-chamber (as it were), waiting till Moses came out, that he might be ready to attend him and though he was all alone for forty days... , yet he was not weary of waiting, as the people were, but when Moses came down he came with him, and not till then." (Matthew Henry)
Joshua was beginning to emerge as a type of Jesus. While here on earth, there was universal sin in the camp, but Jesus stayed close to God the Father. And similarly, for those of us who eagerly wait on Jesus's return, He will appear apart from sin for our salvation. (Heb 9:28)
"Joshua... neither knew what the people had done, nor heard what God had said to Moses." (Benson) But our Jesus knows all things... and Joshua later worshipped Him, as the Commander of Yahweh's host. (Joshua 5:14)
"There is a noise of war in the camp: We might say that Joshua was correct when he said this. However, the noise reflected a spiritual war instead of a material war.” (David Guzik)
Breaking of the tablets:
"Most current writers excuse it on one basis or another. Esses called Moses' anger in this place, 'righteous indignation’. Honeycutt viewed the action of breaking the tables as harmonious with God's will, a 'sign of the annulment of the covenant.' ... God is nowhere said to have rebuked Moses for breaking the tables.” (Coffman's Commentary)
In order to prevail in the fight against sin, Jesus must write His Commandments on our hearts. "For as he is the sole author of law and justice, so he alone can write them on the heart of man." (Clarke)... as it is written: "I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people." (Jeremiah 31:33)
20 Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it. 21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”
"By treating the calf image as he did (Exodus 32:20) Moses was dishonoring as well as destroying it. '... the biblical description of the destruction of the Golden Calf constitutes an Israelite development of an early literary pattern that was employed in Canaan to describe the total annihilation of a detested enemy.' [Samuel Loewenstamm, 'The Making and Destruction of the Golden Calf,'] (Dr. Thomas Constable Expository Note)
"He then proceeded to the destruction of the idol. 'He burned it in (with) fire,' by which process the wooden centre was calcined, and the golden coating either entirely or partially melted; and what was left by the fire he ground till it was fine, or, as it is expressed in Deuteronomy 9:21, he beat it to pieces, grinding it well (... between stones), till it was as fine as dust.
...
The dust, which consisted of particles of charcoal and gold, he then 'strewed upon the water,' or, according to Deuteronomy, 'threw it into the brook which flowed down from the mountain, and made the children of Israel drink,' i.e., compelled them to drink the dust that had been thrown in along with the water of the brook...” (Keil and Delitzsch Commentary)
"The object of this was... to set forth in a visible manner both their sin and its consequences. The sin, as it were, was poured into their own bowels along with the water, a symbolical sign that they would have to bear it and live with it, just as a woman suspected of adultery was obliged to drink the curse-water (Numbers 5:24).[Keil] Jones added this comment: 'So it is with God's judgment of false religion in every age, when people must drink water fouled by their own religious leaders!’” (Coffman's Commentary)
Exodus 32: Moses Executes Judgment
21 And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” 22 So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”
25 Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on Yahweh’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says Yahweh God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’” 28 So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day.
After hearing of the matter from Aaron, Moses proceeded to judgment. But first, he allowed them an opportunity to repent in a most gracious offer.
Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained or "Naked — this word, twice employed in this verse, indicates a letting the people loose from all restraint, and giving them over to licentious and dangerous revelling.” (Whedon) Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
"There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." (Proverbs 14:12)
Seeing their nakedness or unrestraint: "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, the place of judgment; and said, Who is on the Lord's side? - The idolaters had set up the golden calf for their standard, and now Moses sets up his in opposition to them.” (Wesley Notes)
"And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him; "All is put for many." (Gill) -- perhaps all of the true sons of Levi.
The tribe of Levi, Moses' own tribe, now distinguished itself by obeying the call to execute the judgment of Yahweh. "We need not doubt that the 3,000 who were slain were those who persisted in resisting Moses. The spirit of the narrative forbids us to conceive that the act of the Levites was anything like an indiscriminate massacre. An amnesty had first been offered to all by the words: 'Who is on the Lord's side?' Those who were forward to draw the sword were directed not to spare their closest relations or friends; but this must plainly have been with an understood qualification as regards the conduct of those who were to be slain. Had it not been so, they who were on the Lord's side would have had to destroy each other. We need not stumble at the bold, simple way in which the statement is made.” (Barnes)
Three thousand men fell that day –"God's punishment of the rebels was severe (Exodus 32:27) because of the seriousness of their offense. It was also merciful; only 3,000 of the 600,000 men died (Exodus 32:28)." (Constable) All were guilty by that which was done, as well as that which was left undone, but these persisted in their evil because they would not repent and profess Yahweh as Lord of lords.
Exodus 32: Atonement for the Sin of Idolatry
29 Then Moses said, “Consecrate yourselves today to Yahweh, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”
We must distinguish between the first abrogation of the sentence of destruction and the atonement. As you did at the beginning of your service to Yahweh in Exodus 19:10, "Consecrate yourselves— Heb. Fill your hands: [again]… with his offerings; so, doubtless, this verse refers to that consecration, as will appear very evident from Deuteronomy 33:9-10… They were now become exposed to God's judgments… Sin is the nakedness of the soul; and if that be not covered by the blood and merit of a Redeemer, the sword of God's wrath will surely find us out.” (Coke)
30 Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to Yahweh; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” 31 Then Moses returned to Yahweh and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! 32 Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”
"Oh, this people have sinned a great sin…. God had first told him of it, Exodus 32:7 , and now he tells God of it by way of lamentation. He doth not call them God's people, he knew they were unworthy to be called so, but this people. This treacherous ungrateful people, they have made them gods of gold.” (Wesley's Explanatory Notes)
"Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin… Moses also learned on Mount Sinai that God's penalty for idolatry was death. He who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed (Exodus 22:20). He was more aware than ever of the distance between the people and God, and sensed the urgency to intercede.” (David Guzik)
"In every heart there is a deep conviction of the necessity of an Atonement. This is the source of the temples, altars, and sacrifices, which have marked the history of every nation under heaven. Man has felt as by a natural instinct that some reparation was necessary to the broken law." (Meyer)
Take the animal sacrifices in our hands, BUT IF NOT, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written…. "The book of life contains the list of the righteous (Psalm 69:29), and ensures to those whose names are written there, life before God, first in the earthly kingdom of God, and then eternal life also, according to the knowledge of salvation, which keeps pace with the progress of divine revelation, e.g., in the New Testament, where the heirs of eternal life are found written in the book of life (Philemon 4:3; Revelation 3:5; Revelation 13:8, etc.), - an advance for which the way was already prepared by Isaiah 4:3 and Daniel 12:1. To blot out of Jehovah's book, therefore, is to cut off from fellowship with the living God, or from the kingdom of those who live before God, and to deliver over to death. As a true mediator of his people, Moses was ready to stake his own life for the deliverance of the nation, and not to live before God himself, if Jehovah did not forgive the people their sin. These words of Moses were the strongest expression of devoted, self-sacrificing love.” (Keil & Delitzsch)
33 And Yahweh said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. 34 Now therefore, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit punishment upon them for their sin.”
“To make atonement (Exodus 32:30) means to obtain a covering for sin.… God explained a principle of His dealings with people here. Individual sin brings individual responsibility that leads finally to individual judgment (cf. Ezekiel 18:4). God was not saying that everyone will bear the punishment for his own sins precluding substitution, but everyone is responsible for his own sins. He chose not to take Moses' life as a substitute for the guilty in Israel since this would not have been just. Moses being a sinner himself could not have served as a final acceptable substitute for other sinners in any case... God promised Moses that He would not abandon His people for their sin (Exodus 32:34), but when their rebellion was full (at Kadesh Barnea, Numbers 14:27-35) He smote those of them who remained (Exodus 32:35). [Master]...” (Expository Notes of Thomas Constable)
Jesus did what Moses couldn’t do. Jesus “was willing to be cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of his people; and because He died, there is no longer the ‘BUT IF NOT' which in Moses’ prayer speaks of uncertainty; but a blessed assurance that [if we are in Him] we are at one with God, with each other, and with all holy beings.” (F. B. Meyer)
Morning Repost: Exodus 32: Israel is Plagued by Yahweh
35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made. (KJV)
“It might be rendered, thus the Lord punished the people, because they had made the calf which Aaron made; a mode of expression, which involves them and Aaron in equal guilt; and shews, that they who command an evil thing to be done, are equally criminal with the doers of it… The Samaritan, Syriac etc… render this, because they worshipped the calf which Aaron made.” (Coke's Commentary)
Thus NKJV renders: "So the LORD plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made." Aaron might have made the calf, "but the people made it a god, by adoring it.” (Trapp Commentary) Preachers are responsible for causing worship of false gods, but so are the people for demand it and/or not going to the Fountain for themselves.
"This implies that the severe blow ministered by the Levites was followed by still other visitations of penal wrath.” (Whedon Commentary) "Every time they transgressed afterwards Divine justice seems to have remembered this transgression against them. The Jews have a metaphorical saying, apparently founded on this text: 'No affliction has ever happened to Israel in which there was not some particle of the dust of the golden calf.’” (Clarke)
Unrepentance for idolatry lived and bore fruit of other sins, as it does in the church today. Where Yahweh is not regarded and the Word of God is not revered, each person creates their own standard of morality... and the people seek atonement for perceived sins by the works of their own hands.
Some would like to quiet newborn believers. They say, "get your life together before you preach to me." But the Bible has a different message: "Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, 'Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony...'" (Revelation 12:10-11) Jesus is Lord!