Chapter Thirty-Two

1–14. The golden calf and the wrath of the Lord. 15–20. Moses breaks the tablets; destruction of the golden calf. 21–28. Punishment of the idolaters. 29–35. Moses returns to the mountain and his intercession.

Exodus 32:1. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, 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. As is evident from Deut 9:9 onwards, the people’s demand “make us gods who shall go before us” took place shortly before the end of the forty-day period of Moses’ presence on Sinai and was caused by his prolonged absence, which suggested the thought that he would not return from the mountain. Since Moses was the representative of God for the Hebrews (Exod 20:1-2), his non-return to the people served as proof for them that they had been abandoned by the Most High (Deut 31:1-6). Direct indication of the existence of such a view is found in the words “make us gods who shall go before us.” The people do not believe that the cloud pillar, which had previously gone before them as a visible sign of the presence and revelation of the One Who Is to Israel, will come before them, and they ask to replace it with an image of another god. The Hebrew expression “elohim” with a predicate in the plural, which combination is used to denote pagan gods, makes it clear that the Hebrews are asking for an image not of the Most High, but of a pagan god. The correctness of such understanding is confirmed by the words Ps 105: “and they exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox eating grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt” (Ps 105:20-21).

Exodus 32:2. Aaron said to them, “Take off the golden earrings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me. Exodus 32:3. So all the people took off the golden earrings that were on their ears and brought them to Aaron. By his own admission, Aaron, to whom the Hebrews turned as Moses’ substitute (Exod 24:14) with their request, gave in to their demand because this people is “fierce” (Exod 32:22)—that is, fear for his own life (Exod 17:4) compelled him to fulfill the popular demand. As for the proposal to bring “golden earrings, which are on the ears of your wives,” according to the opinion of Ephrem the Syrian and blessed Theodoret, it was made in hope that the women, pitying their treasures, would dissuade their husbands from making the calf.

Exodus 32:4. And he took what they handed him and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a molten calf; and the people said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt! By choosing the form of a calf as the image of a god, Aaron, as most ancient (Philo, Lactantius, blessed Jerome) and modern scholars think, was imitating the Egyptians. In favor of such a conclusion speaks, first of all, the undoubted fact of the Egyptians’ worship of the black bull Apis in Memphis and the white, or Mnevis, in Heliopolis, and the testimony of Greek writers, Strabo, Plutarch, and Herodotus, gives reason to suppose that the Egyptians used images of these sacred animals (although generally zoomorphism was much less widespread among the Egyptians than zoolatry itself). The Egyptian origin of the golden calf is further indicated by the very character of the festival held in its honor. Besides a sacrifice, it consisted of a feast, games (Exod 32:6), dancing (Exod 32:19), and loud songs (Exod 32:18). Egyptian festivals in honor of Isis had approximately similar forms. Describing them, Herodotus says: “some of the women play cymbals, others play the flute, while the other women and men sing and clap their hands.” The words of the protomartyr Stephen speak in favor of the Egyptian origin of the golden calf: “Our ancestors turned their hearts back to Egypt, saying, ‘Make us gods’” (Acts 7:39-40). Since in ancient times the bull or ox served as an image of strength and energy, the Hebrews recognized the power embodied in the golden calf as the power that had brought them out of Egypt: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” But this power was not in their eyes the power of the Most High (at least in the eyes of the overwhelming majority), and the golden calf itself did not serve as its image. The correctness of this view is confirmed, besides what was said above, by the words of the Lord to Moses (Exod 32:8): service to the golden calf is not service to Him, the One Who Is (as it might have been in the eyes of Aaron, Exod 32:5, and other less religiously developed members of the people), represented in the form of a calf, but worship of the latter. The Apostle Paul holds the same view exactly, calling those who served the golden calf idolaters (1 Cor 10:7).

Exodus 32:5. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron proclaimed, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord. Exodus 32:6. 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. By the words “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord” Aaron attempts to correct the people’s view of the golden calf; it is an image of the invisible Lord. But the pagan character of the festival held in honor of the new god proves that the people in the mass remained in their conviction.

Exodus 32:7. And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; Exodus 32:8. they have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them; they have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ Service to the golden calf, as a violation of the first commandment, idolatry, is in a spiritual sense depravity (Deut 4:16), and appeared on the people’s part as a betrayal of the promise they had given to do everything that God said (Exod 19:8). With such a relationship to Jehovah, the Hebrews cease to be the chosen people: “Your people has become perverted” (Deut 32:5). And if the giving of the law is conditioned by Israel’s filial relationship to God, fidelity to His ordinances, then with the betrayal of Jehovah, with the loss of the people’s election, the legislating itself comes to an end: “Go down at once.”

Exodus 32:9. And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people; Exodus 32:10. 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. A particular instance of disobedience serves as a manifestation of the people’s character—that harshness (Exod 33:3, Deut 9:6) that shows itself in resistance to divine guidance, unwillingness to bend their neck under the yoke of the law. With such an attitude of the Hebrews toward God there is no longer a place for His mercy; it excludes even the possibility of intercession: “let me alone” (Jer 7:16). Mercy is replaced by wrath, which shows itself in punishment (Nah 1:2 and others). But the punishment of the unworthy descendants of Abraham does not exclude the possibility of fulfilling the promises given to him: the chosen people will be produced from the descendant of Abraham—Moses.

Exodus 32:11. But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Exodus 32:12. Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent he brought them out, 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 disaster against your people. Exodus 32:13. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by yourself, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ In beseeching the cancellation of the terrible judgment upon the criminal people, Moses does not attempt to diminish its guilt. He only points to God’s previous acts of mercy toward the Hebrews (Exod 32:11), as a basis for showing mercy again. Another basis for this on the part of the Most High is zeal for the glory of His holy name: if He destroys Israel, then other peoples and especially the Egyptians would say with malice: “Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he promised them with an oath, he has slain them in the wilderness” (Deut 11:28). God cannot destroy Israel also in virtue of the promises given to his ancestors. The promises to multiply, preserve, and bring into the promised land were given to the seed of Abraham in general (Gen 48:19), and therefore transferring them to the tribe of Levi, in particular to a single generation of Moses, would be a direct violation of the oath-confirmed covenant.

Exodus 32:14. And the Lord relented of the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. The terrible determination is revoked only for a time (Exod 32:34, Num 14:22 and others).

Exodus 32:15. Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands, tablets that were written on both sides, on the front and on the back. Exodus 32:16. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved upon the tablets. Exodus 32:17. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp. Exodus 32:18. But he 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. Exodus 32:19. 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. The tablets with the written commandments appeared, as it were, as documents of the covenant between God and the people. The people testified to their readiness to fulfill God’s will (Exod 19:8), and the Lord promised on His part to give the tablets (Exod 24:12) and indeed gave them (Exod 31:18). But as soon as Israel failed to fulfill its obligation, violated the covenant, there is no longer any sense in the existence of its document—the tablets: they are broken. “Since,” says blessed Theodoret, “the tablets represented the form of a marital agreement, the bride, not yet having entered the bridal chamber, turned away to adultery, so it was quite just for Moses to tear up this marital agreement.”

Exodus 32:20. 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. In verses 20–29 is described the judgment upon the idolaters, beginning with the destruction of the golden calf, continuing in reproach to Aaron, and ending with the slaying of the guilty. The covenant with Jehovah is broken—the tablets are shattered. But Israel cannot remain with their new god either—the golden calf; its existence is a direct cause for the continuation of idolatry. Therefore it is given over to destruction. The calf was burned—the wooden image in the form of a calf was burned, and the unburned parts—the gold—were broken, ground, cast into a stream flowing from the mountain (Deut 9:21), and the water was given to the Hebrews to drink. The destruction of the calf does not remove the guilt from the people. On the contrary, they drink the water into which the powder remaining after the burning of the calf has been sprinkled, that is, they take on themselves the sin with its consequences.

Exodus 32:21. And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them? Exodus 32:22. And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot; you know the people, that they are set on evil. Exodus 32:23. 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.’ Exodus 32:24. And 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. Among those responsible for the violation of the covenant are Aaron, as the cause of the Hebrews’ entering into the sin of idolatry through the melting of the golden calf. Aaron himself does not deny his guilt but only tries to diminish it: he tries to present his participation in the making of the calf in the lightest terms. According to his words it turns out that he only suggested that those who wore golden ornaments take them off, that they themselves gave him the gold, which he threw into the fire, and that the calf formed of itself.

Exodus 32:25. And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to their shame among their enemies), Moses did not attach special importance to his brother’s explanations. In his view, Aaron is guilty of such indulgence as he should not have allowed under any circumstances and which brought shame on the people in the eyes of outsiders.

Exodus 32:26. Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. Aaron’s indication of the people’s unruliness as the cause of his action had a certain degree of justice. In response to Moses’ call: “Who is on the Lord’s side, come to me!” only the sons of Levi responded, a tribe that at that time was quite numerous: it numbered more than 22,000 males (Num 3:39). The disposition of the rest of the people turned out to be not on the side of the Lord, but on the side of the golden calf. And this stubbornness, more sinful and criminal than the worship of the calf itself, since it spoke of a complete hardness of heart, brought fully deserved punishment upon the people.

Exodus 32:27. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay brother, friend, and neighbor.’ Exodus 32:28. And the sons of Levi did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand men of the people fell. Since all the sons of Levi gathered to Moses (Exod 32:26), the brothers killed by them were not brothers in the literal sense. The three thousand slain were punished not for the general guilt of all the people, but for their own personal guilt. They, it is supposed, continued to celebrate their festival in the street, continued even after much time had passed since Moses’ return from the mountain, after the destruction of the golden calf.

Exodus 32:29. And Moses said, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of a son or a brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day. The work of punishment carried out by the Levites without indulgence, without exceptions based on personal relationships to one or another of the guilty, was an act of service to the Lord, a sacred work. Therefore Moses said to them: “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord.” By their conduct the sons of Levi earned a blessing from the Lord: “so that he might bestow a blessing upon you.”

Exodus 32:30. 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. Moses’ ascent to Mount Sinai and his forty-day stay on it in fasting and prayer (Deut 9:9) had the purpose of atoning for the great sin committed by the people. Moses informs the people of his intention in advance. This advance notice could be of great significance both for the people and for Moses himself. For the former it awakened a consciousness of sin and repentance for it, and thereby facilitated the intercession of the prophet; the more people there would be who were sincerely repenting of their sin, the sooner could Moses’ prayers for the forgiveness of the sin be heard.

Exodus 32:31. So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has committed a great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold. Exodus 32:32. But now, if you will, forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written. Since the people’s sin consisted of a violation of the covenant, the request of Moses “forgive them their sin” is equivalent to a plea: do not consider the covenant broken, do not reject Israel, do not take from it the status and rights of the chosen people. The necessity of such a request was brought about by the following. In response to the first intercession of Moses (Exod 32:11-13) the Lord answered with the promise not to destroy Israel. The continuation of its existence was thus assured. But such a promise did not yet mean that the Hebrews remained the chosen people. Doubt about this was aroused by the very disposition of the people, not only failing to show readiness to recover divine mercy for themselves, but revealing extreme stubbornness (Exod 32:26), threatening them with complete rejection on God’s part. In view of this, Moses prays: “forgive their sin.” If forgiveness cannot be given, he offers his own life as a sacrifice: “please blot me out of your book that you have written” (cf. Ps 55:9, Dan 12:1).

Exodus 32:33. But the Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. Exodus 32:34. But now go, 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. The law, which the Hebrews violated, demands punishment of the guilty (Exod 32:22), and since the righteousness of one is not imputed for righteousness to another (Ezek 18:20), the self-sacrifice of Moses cannot be accepted. The guilty will be punished, not now, but later: to future transgressions will be added then the current guilt of the people. But until this time comes, Moses must remain the leader of Israel: “lead the people.” As before, he will be guided directly by God Himself: “my angel shall go before you.” The promise of divine guidance is made personally to Moses, not to the people, and this is one of the testimonies of the wrath of the Most High against sinning Israel.

Exodus 32:35. And the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron had made. The reference is not to a new punishment, but to one that has already occurred (Exod 32:28), which comes from God (Exod 32:27).