1And the people will see that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, and the people will assemble to Aaron, and will say to him, Arise, make to us gods who shall go before us: for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egyt, we shall not know what was to him. 2And Aaron will say to them, Break off the gold ear-rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring to me. 3And all the people will break off the gold ear-rings which are in their ears, and they will bring to Aaron. 4And he will take from their hand, and will form it with a graver, and he will make it a molten calf: and they will say, These thy gods, Israel, who brought thee up from the land of Egypt 5And Aaron will see, and he will build an altar before it; and Aaron will call and say, A festival to Jehovah tomorrow. 6And they will rise early early on the morrow, and they will raise up a burnt-offering, and they will bring near peace; and the people will sit down to eat and drink, and they will rise up to play. 7And Jehovah will speak to Moses, Go, descend: for thy people were corrupted whom thou didst bring up out of the land of Egypt 8For they turned aside quickly from the way which I commanded them: they made for them a molten calf, and worship to it, and will sacrifice to it, and will say, These thy gods, Israel, which raised thee up out of the land of Egypt 9And Jehovah will say to Moses, I saw this people, and behold, it a people of a hard neck 10And thou be at rest to me, and my wrath shall kindle against them, and I will consume them: and I will make thee into a great nation. 11And Moses will supplicate the face of Jehovah, his God, and will say, For what will thy wrath kindle against thy people which thou didst bring forth out of the land of Egypt by thy great power and with a strong hand? 12Lest the Egyptians shall speak, saying, With evil he brought them forth to kill them in the mountains, and to finish them from the face of the earth. Turn back from the heat of thy wrath, and repent concerning evil towards thy people 13Remember Abraham, Isaak, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear to them by thyself, and thou wilt speak to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land which I said, I will give to your seed and they inherited forever. 14And Jehovah repented concerning the evil which he spake to do to his people. 15And Moses will turn and will go down from the mount, and the two tables of testimony in his hand: the tables were written from the two opposite sides; from hence and from thence they were written. 16And the tables they the work of God, and the writing the writing of God, it being cut in the tables. 17And Joshua will hear the voice of the people in making a loud noise, and he will say to Moses, A voice of war in the camp. 18And he will say, Not the voice of the shouting of victory, and not the voice of the shouting of defeat: the voice of shouting I heard. 19And it will be when he drew near to the camp, and he will see the calf and the lute: and the wrath of Moses will kindle, and he will cast the tables out of his hand, and he will break them under the mount 20And he will take the calf which they made, and will burn it in fire, and which he will crush even to small dust, and will scatter upon the face of the water, and will give the sons of Israel to drink. 21And Moses will say to Aaron, What did this people to thee that thou didst bring upon it a great sin? 22And Aaron will say, The wrath of my lord shall not kindle: thou knowest the people that it is in sin. 23And they will say to me; Make to us gods which shall go before us: for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we knew not what was to him. 24And I said to them, To whom is gold, he shall break it off. And they will give it to me, and I shall cast it into the fire and this calf will come out 25And Moses will see the people that it was uncovered (for Aaron uncovered it for overthrow among their enemies). 26And Moses will stand in the gate of the camp, and will say, Who for Jehovah? to me. And all the sons of Levi will assemble together to him. 27And he will say to them, Thus said Jehovah the God of Israel, Put ye each his sword upon his thigh, and pass ye through and turn ye back from gate to gate in the camp, and slay ye each his brother, and each his friend, and each his near one. 28And the sons of Levi will do according to the word of Moses: and there will fall from the people in that day about three thousand men. 29And Moses will say, Fill your hand this day to Jehovah, for each upon his son and upon his brother, to give to you a blessing this day. 30And it shall be from the morrow, and Moses will say to the people, Ye sinned a great sin: and now I will go up to Jehovah; perhaps I shall expiate for your sin. 31And Moses will turn back to Jehovah, and say, Ah, now, this people sinned a great sin, and they will make to them golden gods. 32And now if thou wilt, lift up their sin; and if not, wipe me off from thy book which thou didst write. 33And Jehovah will say to Moses, whoever that sinned against me I will wipe him off from my book' 34And now go, lead the people to where I spake to thee: behold, my messenger shall go before thee: and in the day of my reviewing, and I reviewed upon them their sin. 35And Jehovah will smite the people for their making the calf which Aaron made.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 THE GOLDEN CALF. (Exo. 32:1-35)
when the people saw that Moses delayed--They supposed that he had lost his way in the darkness or perished in the fire.
the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron--rather, "against" Aaron in a tumultuous manner, to compel him to do what they wished. The incidents related in this chapter disclose a state of popular sentiment and feeling among the Israelites that stands in singular contrast to the tone of profound and humble reverence they displayed at the giving of the law. Within a space of little more than thirty days, their impressions were dissipated. Although they were still encamped upon ground which they had every reason to regard as holy; although the cloud of glory that capped the summit of Sinai was still before their eyes, affording a visible demonstration of their being in close contact, or rather in the immediate presence, of God, they acted as if they had entirely forgotten the impressive scenes of which they had been so recently the witnesses.
said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us--The Hebrew word rendered "gods" is simply the name of God in its plural form. The image made was single, and therefore it would be imputing to the Israelites a greater sin than they were guilty of, to charge them with renouncing the worship of the true God for idols. The fact is, that they required, like children, to have something to strike their senses, and as the Shekinah, "the glory of God," of which they had hitherto enjoyed the sight, was now veiled, they wished for some visible material object as the symbol of the divine presence, which should go before them as the pillar of fire had done.
2 Aaron said, . . . Break off . . . earrings--It was not an Egyptian custom for young men to wear earrings, and the circumstance, therefore, seems to point out "the mixed rabble," who were chiefly foreign slaves, as the ringleaders in this insurrection. In giving direction to break their earrings, Aaron probably calculated on gaining time; or, perhaps, on their covetousness and love of finery proving stronger than their idolatrous propensity. If such were his expectations, they were doomed to signal disappointment. Better to have calmly and earnestly remonstrated with them, or to have preferred duty to expediency, leaving the issue in the hands of Providence.
3 all the people brake off the golden earrings--The Egyptian rings, as seen on the monuments, were round massy plates of metal; and as they were rings of this sort the Israelites wore, their size and number must, in the general collection, have produced a large store of the precious metal.
4 fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf--The words are transposed, and the rendering should be, "he framed with a graving tool the image to be made, and having poured the liquid gold into the mould, he made it a molten calf." It is not said whether it was of life size, whether it was of solid gold or merely a wooden frame covered with plates of gold. This idol seems to have been the god Apis, the chief deity of the Egyptians, worshipped at Memphis under the form of a live ox, three years old. It was distinguished by a triangular white spot on its forehead and other peculiar marks. Images of it in the form of a whole ox, or of a calf's head on the end of a pole, were very common; and it makes a great figure on the monuments where it is represented in the van of all processions, as borne aloft on men's shoulders.
they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt--It is inconceivable that they, who but a few weeks before had witnessed such amazing demonstrations of the true God, could have suddenly sunk to such a pitch of infatuation and brutish stupidity, as to imagine that human art or hands could make a god that should go before them. But it must be borne in mind, that though by election and in name they were the people of God, they were as yet, in feelings and associations, in habits and tastes, little, if at all different, from Egyptians. They meant the calf to be an image, a visible sign or symbol of Jehovah, so that their sin consisted not in a breach of the FIRST [
Exod 20:3], but of the SECOND commandment [
Exod 20:4-
Exod 20:6].
5 Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow is a feast to the Lord--a remarkable circumstance, strongly confirmatory of the view that they had not renounced the worship of Jehovah, but in accordance with Egyptian notions, had formed an image with which they had been familiar, to be the visible symbol of the divine presence. But there seems to have been much of the revelry that marked the feasts of the heathen.
7 the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down--Intelligence of the idolatrous scene enacted at the foot of the mount was communicated to Moses in language borrowed from human passions and feelings, and the judgment of a justly offended God was pronounced in terms of just indignation against the gross violation of the so recently promulgated laws.
10 make of thee a great nation--Care must be taken not to suppose this language as betokening any change or vacillation in the divine purpose. The covenant made with the patriarchs had been ratified in the most solemn manner; it could not and never was intended that it should be broken. But the manner in which God spoke to Moses served two important purposes--it tended to develop the faith and intercessory patriotism of the Hebrew leader, and to excite the serious alarm of the people, that God would reject them and deprive them of the privileges they had fondly fancied were so secure.
15 Moses turned, and went down from the mount--The plain, Er-Raheh, is not visible from the top of Jebel Musa, nor can the mount be descended on the side towards that valley; hence Moses and his companion, who on duty had patiently waited his return in the hollow of the mountain's brow, heard the shouting some time before they actually saw the camp.
19 Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands--The arrival of the leader, like the appearance of a specter, arrested the revellers in the midst of their carnival, and his act of righteous indignation when he dashed on the ground the tables of the law, in token that as they had so soon departed from their covenant relation, so God could withdraw the peculiar privileges that He had promised them--that act, together with the rigorous measures that followed, forms one of the most striking scenes recorded in sacred history.
20 he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, &c.--It has been supposed that the gold was dissolved by natron or some chemical substance. But there is no mention of solubility here, or in
Deut 9:21; it was "burned in the fire," to cast it into ingots of suitable size for the operations which follow--"grounded to powder"; the powder of malleable metals can be ground so fine as to resemble dust from the wings of a moth or butterfly; and these dust particles will float in water for hours, and in a running stream for days. These operations of grinding were intended to show contempt for such worthless gods, and the Israelites would be made to remember the humiliating lesson by the state of the water they had drunk for a time [NAPIER]. Others think that as the idolatrous festivals were usually ended with great use of sweet wine, the nauseous draught of the gold dust would be a severe punishment (compare
2Kgs 23:6,
2Kgs 23:15;
2Chr 15:16;
2Chr 34:7).
22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot--Aaron cuts a poor figure, making a shuffling excuse and betraying more dread of the anger of Moses than of the Lord (compare
Deut 9:20).
25 naked--either unarmed and defenseless, or ashamed from a sense of guilt. Some think they were literally naked, as the Egyptians performed some of their rites in that indecent manner.
26 Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said--The camp is supposed to have been protected by a rampart after the attack of the Amalekites.
Who is on the Lord's side? let him come unto me--The zeal and courage of Moses was astonishing, considering he opposed an intoxicated mob. The people were separated into two divisions, and those who were the boldest and most obstinate in vindicating their idolatry were put to death, while the rest, who withdrew in shame or sorrow, were spared.
29 Consecrate yourselves to-day to the Lord--or, "Ye have consecrated yourselves to-day." The Levites, notwithstanding the dejection of Aaron, distinguished themselves by their zeal for the honor of God and their conduct in doing the office of executioners on this occasion; and this was one reason that they were appointed to a high and honorable office in the service of the sanctuary.
30 Moses said unto the people, Ye have sinned a great sin--Moses labored to show the people the heinous nature of their sin, and to bring them to repentance. But not content with that, he hastened more earnestly to intercede for them.
32 blot me . . . out of thy book--an allusion to the registering of the living, and erasing the names of those who die. What warmth of affection did he evince for his brethren! How fully was he animated with the true spirit of a patriot, when he professed his willingness to die for them. But Christ actually died for His people (
Rom 5:8).
35 the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf--No immediate judgments were inflicted, but this early lapse into idolatry was always mentioned as an aggravation of their subsequent apostasies.