seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Exodus 32:1 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
15 Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. 16 The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
17 When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”
18 Moses replied:
“It is not the sound of victory,
it is not the sound of defeat;
it is the sound of singing that I hear.”
it is not the sound of defeat;
it is the sound of singing that I hear.”
19 When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. 20 And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.
21 He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”
22 “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. 23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ 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!”
25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.
27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”
30 The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”
31 So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. 32 But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
33 The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”
35 And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.
Here's the link to the commentary I use.Come, make us gods that shall go before us: The people wanted gods to go before them, leading them to the Promised Land. They knew the LORD led them out of Egypt and they knew the LORD God had revealed Himself at Mount Sinai. Yet, they were willing to trust a god they could make to finish what the LORD began.
We do not know what has become of him: Not knowing led Israel into sin. Frustrated because of this uncertainty, Israel turned to idolatry and sin.
Then they said, “This is your god”: Aaron did not anoint this thing as their god; he simply went along with the people as they proclaimed it as their god. He was probably flattered at their admiration of his creation.
When Aaron saw it: Aaron was flattered by the enthusiastic response of the people. When he saw their devotion to this idol, he built an altar before it. He began to organize the worship of the idol he just made.
And rose up to play: This is a tasteful way to speak of gross immorality among the people of Israel. Their worship included eating, drinking (in the sense of drunkenness) and sexual immorality.
“The verb translated play suggests sex-play in Hebrew… and therefore we are probably to understand drunken orgies.” (Cole)
Do not let the anger of my lord become hot: Aaron essentially asked Moses to calm down, and to not be so angry. Aaron had no sense of the greatness of his sin. He had no significant sense of the fear of the LORD.
About three thousand men of the people fell that day: It seems that the sin of Israel at the golden calf involved more than these 3,000 people. Yet these were undoubtedly those most flagrant in their idolatry and immorality, or these were the leaders of the sinful conduct.
Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book: God agreed to spare the nation as a whole, but He definitely reserved the right to judge individual sinners.
Are you still reading? Thank you for helping me stay in the Word. I've skipped a lot of chapters. I didn't want to read the instructions for building the tabernacle. I guess I'm a lot like those Israelites who "couldn't wait" for Moses to come down off the mountain so they could get on with going to the Promised Land. Please feel free to go back and read those chapters.
Moses and Joshua were up on the mountain. Aaron, Moses' brother, and the Elders were back with the Israelites down in the valley.
The Israelites were, no doubt, anxious to get back on the trek to the "Promised Land". They were tired of waiting on Moses and Joshua. When the majority had enough, they went to Aaron and demanded that he make them "gods" that would lead them to the "Promised Land".
They decided they didn't need Moses and his stick. They would go back to their "tried and true" method... They would insist that Aaron make a new "stick" so they could get on with the journey.
Aaron was eager to please, and probably a little afraid of the mob. So, he got them to throw all their gold and silver into a pot and he crafted a crude calf shape out of it for them to worship... and the next day the people were so happy, they held a party that turned into a drunken orgy.
God and Moses were so offended, God wanted to destroy them all. Moses pleaded with God and got Him to delay the massacre.
When Moses got back to camp... what he saw upset him so badly, he threw the tablets God had inscribed for them, and broke them.
Then Moses called out those who were not involved in the upheaval, and told them to strap on their swords. The Levites were not involved. These were the descendants of Jacob's son Levi. Levi, as I recall, was the Moses' grandfather or great grandfather... and Levi was with Simeon when they murdered all the men in Shechem after the rape of Dinah. The Levites were not too squeamish about strapping on a sword.
They killed 3,000 men after that orgy.
Then Moses took the crude little calf, beat it to dust, and poured the dust in the water... and made everyone take a drink!
Then Moses had to go back up the mountain and get a new set of tablets... and they had to wait longer to get back on the trek to the Promised Land.
Oh boy this is a long one...
3,000 men were executed.
