CHAPTER 32

(1491 B.C.)

THE GOLDEN CALF

¹And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the Mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. (Israel, as we shall see, could not go very long without strong spiritual leadership; neither can the modern Church. Without Moses being present, the people would cry, Make us gods. It has little changed! Aaron will acquiesce to the demands of the people, as too much of the spiritual leadership does presently.)

²And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

³And all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. (Unless we hover close to Christ, none of us are very far from the golden calf. For instance, most Churches give people what they want, instead of what they need. The seeker-sensitive Churches and, in fact, most all, are perfect examples of this [Acts 5:29].)

⁴And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt. (The calf was the great god of the Egyptians. It was carried in the vanguard of their processions. Sacrifices were offered to it, and lascivious dances executed in its honor. It was worshipped as the generator of life, with, no doubt, the Israelites being very familiar with this practice. Golden calves, regrettably, at the present time, abound plentifully.)

⁵And when Aaron saw it, he built an Altar before it (all golden calves are religious); and Aaron made proclamation, and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD. (Williams says: One of the great ploys of Satan is not to abolish God, but to represent Him by something visible. Also, Satan can, through a religious teacher like Aaron, associate idolatry with Christ, recognize the good in all religions, and provide a worship that appeals to mans natural heart. In fact, everything was done by Aaron under the cover of religion.)

⁶And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. (Their play referred to licentiousness and vulgarity of the worst order. Cain had the right Altar, but the wrong sacrifice [Gen., Chpt. 4]. Israel here had the right sacrifices, but the wrong altar. The Lord could not accept either one, because both were man-devised and that is the great problem of the modern Church [II Cor. 11:4].)

⁷And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy (your) people, which thou (you) brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves (by the use of the pronouns thy and thou, we learn that God had disowned Israel here; in Verse 11, Moses disowns them himself; in a sense, the entirety of the nation of Israel, at least as a whole, had made spiritual orphans of themselves):

⁸They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be your gods, O Israel, which have brought you up out of the land of Egypt. (These were a people in whom was no Faith [Deut. 32:20; Heb. 4:1-2].)

⁹And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people (hardened heart):

¹⁰Now therefore let Me alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of you a great nation. (The only thing that stands between man and eternal Hell is the Cross of Christ. That being abandoned, as it was by Israel, judgment must follow and it always does!)

INTERCESSION

¹¹And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why does Your wrath wax hot against Your people, which You have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? (All of these things, as wonderful as they were and, in a sense, is the same presently with every Believer, still, cannot condone sin. As should be obvious, this refutes the unscriptural doctrine of unconditional eternal security.)

¹²Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did He bring them out, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the Earth? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against Your people.

¹³Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your Own Self, and said unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it forever. (As much as anything, this was a test for Moses. I think most Bible Scholars, in addressing this scenario, make God too little and Moses too big.)

¹⁴And the LORD repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people. (This doesnt mean that the Lord did something wrong, but rather that He simply turned aside from the proposed direction. Oftentimes, even as here, what God does is predicated on what we do. In fact, the entirety of this generation did die in the wilderness, and did so because of unbelief.)

MOSES

¹⁵And Moses turned, and went down from the Mount, and the two Tables of the Testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written (the Ten Commandments, written by the Finger of God [31:18]).

¹⁶And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. (The Law began with the Judgment of God, even as all Law must begin with the Judgment of God.)

¹⁷And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. (It seems that Joshua has waited for Moses for the entirety of the 40 days and 40 nights. He did so about halfway down the mountain. He will now accompany Moses to the base of the Mountain.)

¹⁸And he said, It is not the voice of them who shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them who cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear. (This was a far cry from the song of Moses, which celebrated the deliverance of the Children of Israel from Egyptian bondage [Ex., Chpt. 15.)

¹⁹And it came to pass, as soon as he came near unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and broke them beneath the Mount. (The anger of Moses was righteous indignation, and rightly so. He broke the Tables as a symbol of the anger of God, and not by him losing his temper.)

²⁰And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the Children of Israel drink of it. (The Lord wanted Moses to do what he did, in order to show the people the utter, absolute worthlessness of this idol they had made.)

²¹And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto you, that you have brought so great a sin upon them? (Verses 21-24 record Aarons excuse. He blames his actions on the people. Bible Repentance demands that God be justified, and we be condemned. This means that God demands that we accept the blame for our failure. This is the only kind of Repentance that He will honor.)

²²And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: you know the people, that they are set on mischief. (Most Preachers presently, like Aaron, are little concerned about sin. This means they do not properly understand sin or the Cross!)

²³For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. (In a fashion, he is now blaming the situation on Moses!)

²⁴And I said unto them, Whosoever has any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf (at least one of the most lame excuses thats ever been offered; and yet, as far as we know, the Lord did not direct Moses to punish Aaron in any way; it was not because he was the brother of Moses, because God is no respecter of persons; quite possibly, the magnitude of what he had done, which directly caused the deaths of some 3,000 men, creating a terrible amount of suffering, was punishment enough; as the High Priest, he was to stand as a mediator between God and the people, thereby saving their lives; and for him to be the cause of their deaths had to weigh heavily upon him).

IDOLATERS SLAIN

²⁵And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies [this refers not only to licentiousness, but, as well, to them being naked to the Judgment of God]:)

²⁶Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORDs side? (The Hebrew actually says, Who for Jehovah? It formed an excellent rallying cry. Those who were engaging in this licentiousness, and those who saw no fault in it, obviously were not on the Lords side. Neither are those which are in that camp presently!) let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. (That day, the sons of Levi won the Priesthood. The curse was broken [Gen. 49:5-7].)

²⁷And he said unto them, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. (This which was to be done, first of all, was instruction from the Lord. Concerning this, Pink says: So in preaching to idolaters today it is the wrath of a Holy God, and not His Love [which is a Truth for His Own people only], which needs pressing upon them [Rom. 1:18].)

²⁸And the Children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men. (These were the ones who had mocked the call of Moses, and had continued on in their wicked ways. They were determined to continue to worship the golden calf. This tells us that at the giving of the Law, three thousand men lost their lives, and their souls. On the Day of Pentecost, the beginning of Grace, three thousand men were saved [Acts 2:41].)

²⁹For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day. (This concerned the Tribe of Levi, and that they would be installed as Priests of the Lord on this particular day.)

³⁰And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, You have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall make an Atonement for your sin. (The people had sinned, and the only thing that could make Atonement for sin was the Cross of Christ, which was portrayed in symbolic form respecting the Sacrifices. Moses could not atone for sin; the following terminology proves the point. For all practical purposes, it seems that the Lord ignored his statements.)

³¹And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. (Some sins are worse than others, and idolatry, which comes in many forms, is one of the worst of all [Jn. 19:11].)

³²Yet now, if You will forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I pray You, out of Your Book which You have written. (This is the first mention of the Book of Life found in the Bible. God could only forgive the sins of those who asked for such forgiveness [I Jn. 1:9].)

³³And the LORD said unto Moses, Whosoever has sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My Book. (Concerning this, Williams says: Moses descended from on high with the Law. Confronted with mans sin, he broke both Tables, then returned with a cheerless peradventure on his lips to seek an uncertain forgiveness. He failed!

Christ descended from on high, fulfilled the Law, and having, on behalf of sinners, suffered its full penalty, returned to Heaven having shed His Precious Blood, the sign of His accomplished Atonement, to obtain an absolutely certain forgiveness.)

³⁴Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto you: behold, My Angel shall go before you: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. (It has been argued, and even conjectured, that this Angel is different from the Angel of Exodus 23:20. It is my thought that this is the same Angel. It seems as though the Lord had threatened to remove this Angel, Who, in essence, was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, but now consents that He may remain with Israel, thereby continuing to lead and to watch over them.)

³⁵And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made. (The word plagued here means to push, defeat, inflict disease, kill, smite, put to the worst. Exactly what the Lord did, we arent told. It seems to have been in the form of chastisement, and seems somewhat, as the next Chapter proclaims, to have had a positive effect.)