Deuteronomy 9 More of "why us"

seekeroftruth

Well-Known Member
Deuteronomy 9:7 Remember this and never forget how you aroused the anger of the Lord your God in the wilderness. From the day you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the Lord. 8 At Horeb you aroused the Lord’s wrath so that he was angry enough to destroy you. 9 When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water. 10 The Lord gave me two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the Lord proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.

11 At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. 12 Then the Lord told me, “Go down from here at once, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have turned away quickly from what I commanded them and have made an idol for themselves.”

13 And the Lord said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed! 14 Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”

15 So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. 16 When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. 17 So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes.

18 Then once again I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger. 19 I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the Lord listened to me. 20 And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I prayed for Aaron too. 21 Also I took that sinful thing of yours, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain​

This is from the easy English site.

Moses reminded the Israelites about the time when they had made a bull from gold. Very often in those countries, people wrote agreements on stones. Moses went up a mountain to receive the covenant on stones. But the Israelites, with Aaron’s help, had made a metal bull. In chapter 8 verse 19 God said this. He would destroy them if they followed a false god. Now God said that he would do this. He would make another nation from the family of Moses. So, Moses went down the mountain. He saw the bull that they had made out of metal. He threw down and broke the two blocks of stone. That showed the Israelites that they had not obeyed God’s commandments. Moses prayed for the people. His prayer is in verses 25-29, below. He also prayed for Aaron, who had made the model of the bull. Then Moses broke the model of the bull and he made it into dust. God was ready to destroy the nation if Moses had not prayed for them. Moses had to pray even for Aaron, who was the chief priest. It was Aaron’s responsibility to speak God’s words to the Israelites.​

You know I said the story Aaron gave Moses about the calf just popping out of the cauldron of molten metal cracks me up every time I hear it. Maybe I should explain. I use to work in my dad's dental lab. I made removable metal fixtures [partials]. I use to make a plaster cast of the person's mouth, fabricated a design of the metal partial in wax, burn out the wax and throw in the metal. The partial didn't just pop out of the oven after all that preparation.... it had to be broken out of the mold, then the burrs had to be removed and then it had to be polished. All that was done before it went to another department where the teeth and the acrylic gums were processed on to make it useful and pretty.

Exodus 32:24 So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”​

The process of making the calf is described in Exodus 32:2-4 and it's followed by the decision to make sacrifices to it as well as the decision to party. It wasn't just "out came this calf!".

Stupid evil humans.....

:coffee:
 
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