As soon as he came near to the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. Then Moses’ anger grew hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, and broke them beneath the mountain.
Parallel Translations
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As soon as he came near to the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. Then Moses’ anger grew hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, and broke them beneath the mountain.
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And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh 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 brake them beneath the mount.
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And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh 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.
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Cross-references (15)
Passages linked to Exodus 32:19 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Deuteronomy 9:16-17 I looked, and behold, you had sinned against Yahweh your God. You had made yourselves a molded calf. You had quickly turned away from the way which Yahweh had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets, and threw them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.
- Exodus 15:20 Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dances.
- Exodus 32:4-6 He received what they handed him, fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it a molded calf. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation, and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh.” They rose up early on the next day, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
- Exodus 32:11 Moses begged Yahweh his God, and said, “Yahweh, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, that you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
- Numbers 12:3 Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all the men who were on the surface of the earth.
- Deuteronomy 27:26 ‘Cursed is he who doesn’t uphold the words of this law by doing them.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ ”
- 2 Samuel 6:14 David danced before Yahweh with all his might; and David was clothed in a linen ephod.
- Jeremiah 31:32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says Yahweh.
- Lamentations 5:15 The joy of our heart has ceased. Our dance is turned into mourning.
- Zechariah 11:10-11 I took my staff Favor, and cut it apart, that I might break my covenant that I had made with all the peoples. It was broken in that day; and thus the poor of the flock that listened to me knew that it was Yahweh’s word.
- Zechariah 11:14 Then I cut apart my other staff, even Union, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.
- Matthew 5:22 But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of the judgment. Whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ will be in danger of the council. Whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of Gehenna.
- Mark 3:5 When he had looked around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardening of their hearts, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored as healthy as the other.
- Mark 10:14 But when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, and said to them, “Allow the little children to come to me! Don’t forbid them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these.
- Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry, and don’t sin.” Don’t let the sun go down on your wrath,
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Exo 32:19 And it came to pass, as soon…
Exo 32:19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh 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 brake them beneath the mount.
Ver. 19. And Moses’s anger waxed hot.] Meekness in this case had been no better than mopishness. How blessedly blown up was Moses here! So, Cranmer the martyr, though in his own cause so meek and mild, that it was grown to a proverb, "Do my Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and you shall be sure to have him your friend for ever after," yet in the truth’s cause, opposed by any man, no general in battle ever showed greater courage and constancy than he, saith our Churchantiquary. {a}
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He saw the calf, and the dancing.] One calf about another. It was a custom among Papists, that men should run to the image of St Virus, and there they should dance all day, usque ad animae deliquium, till they fainted and fell into a swoon. {b}
{a} Antiq. Eccl. Brit., p. 341
{b} Joh. Maulii, loc. com., 187.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Not through rash anger, but by Divine instinct, partly…
Not through rash anger, but by Divine instinct, partly to punish their idolatry with so great a loss, and partly to show that the covenant made between God and them, so much to their advantage, which was contained in those tables, was by their sin broken, and now of none effect, and not to be renewed but by bitter repentance.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And he took the calf which they had made,…
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire,.... Melted it down into a mass of gold, whereby it lost its form, and had no more the appearance of a calf:
and ground it to powder; but how this was done is not easy to say, whether by beating the mass of gold into thin plates, and then filing them small; for this art has remained unknown; the chemists have boasted of it as only possessed of it; but it seems Moses, learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, had it: however, it is now certain by various experiments, that gold, though a very thick and heavy body, consists of parts which are separable from one another, and to be divided into infinite subtler parts: the famous Dr. Halley has shown that one grain of gold may be divided into 10,000 parts, and yet visible; and Dr. Keil has demonstrated that a cubic thumb's breadth of gold is divisible into 47,619,047 parts, which do not escape the sight: according to the computation of the said Dr. Halley, leaf gold, with which silver threads are gilded, is not thicker than the 124,500 part of a thumb's breadth; so that a cube of the hundredth part of a thumb's breadth of the said subtle parts may contain 243,000,000 (l):
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and strawed it upon the water; of the brook that descended out of the mount, Deu 9:21 now called the fountain of St. Catharine; which Dr. Shaw (m) says, after it has supplied the demands of the convent (now built on this mount) is received without into a large basin, which running over, forms a little rill: and another traveller (n) speaks of a fountain about the middle of Mount Sinai, which, though small, was found in it running water very wholesome and refreshing: but if this was a brook of running water, it seems more likely that water was taken out of it and put into a proper vessel or vessels, on which the powder of the golden calf was strewed; or otherwise it would have been carried away with the stream, and could not have been taken up and given to the people to drink, as is next said; and this shows that it must be reduced to a very small light powder indeed, to float upon the top of the water and not sink to the bottom, as mere filings of gold would necessarily do:
and made the children of Israel drink of it; not the whole body of them, or every individual, but the more principal persons, and such who had been the most active in encouraging the making of the calf, and the worshipping of it: this was done not only that they might entirely lose their gold and have no manner of profit by it, but that the idol, which is nothing in the world, might be brought to nothing indeed, and that there might be no remains of it to be abused to superstitious uses, as well as to show them their folly in worshipping that which could not save itself; and by drinking it, whereby it passed through them and became an excrement, to express the utmost abhorrence and detestation of it; as also to show that they deserved the curse of God to enter into them, as oil into their bowels, as that water did, and be utterly destroyed: the Jewish writers, as Jarchi and Aben Ezra, suppose this water, with the powder of the golden calf in it, had the same effect and was for the same use as the water of jealousy, that it made the bellies of those that drank it to swell: and the Targum of Jonathan observes, that whoever gave any golden vessel towards the making of the calf, there was a sign appeared in his countenance: and Aben Ezra suggests the same, but neither of them say what it was: but an ancient Latin poet, quoted by Selden (o), reports from the Hebrew writers, that whoever were guilty of this idolatry, as soon as they drank of the water their beards became yellow as gold, whereby the Levites knew who were guilty, and slew them; but as this is quite fabulous, so I have not met with it in any Jewish writer, only an author of theirs, of great antiquity and credit with them, says (p), that whoever kissed the calf with his whole heart, his lips became golden.
(l) Vid. Scheuchzer. Physic. Sacr. vol. 2. p. 247. (m) Travels, p. 242. Ed. 2. (n) Baumgarten. peregrinatio, l. 1. c. 24. p. 61, 62. (o) De Diis Syris Syntagma, 1. c. 4. p. 156. (p) Pirke Eliezer, c. 45.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain He saw the calf, and the dancing, and his…
He saw the calf, and the dancing, and his anger waxed hot - It is no breach of the law of meekness to shew our displeasure at wickedness. Those are angry and sin not, that are angry at sin only. Moses shewed himself angry, both by breaking the tables, and burning the calf, that he might by these expressions of a strong passion awaken the people to a sense of the greatness of their sin. He broke the tables before their eyes, as it is Deut. ix, 17, that the sight of it might fill them with confusion when they saw what blessings they had lost. The greatest sign of God's displeasure against any people is his taking his law from them.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 19. He saw the calf, and the dancing]…
Verse 19. He saw the calf, and the dancing] Dancing before the idol takes place in almost every Hindoo idolatrous feast.-Ward.
He cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them] He might have done this through distress and anguish of spirit, on beholding their abominable idolatry and dissolute conduct; or he probably did it emblematically, intimating thereby that, as by this act of his the tables were broken in pieces, on which the law of God was written; so they, by their present conduct, had made a breach in the covenant, and broken the laws of their Maker. But we must not excuse this act; it was rash and irreverent; God's writing should not have been treated in this way.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Exo 32:19. He saw the calf and the dancing,…
Exo 32:19. He saw the calf and the dancing, and his anger waxed hot — It is no breach of the law of meekness to show our displeasure at wickedness. Those are angry and sin not, that are angry at sin only. Moses showed himself angry, both by breaking the tables, and burning the calf, that he might, by these expressions of a strong passion, awaken the people to a sense of the greatness of their sin. He broke the tables before their eyes, (as it is Deu 9:17,) that the sight of it might fill them with confusion when they saw what blessings they had lost. The greatest sign of God’s displeasure against any people is his taking his law from them.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Mount. "Finding the people abandoned to luxury and sacrilege,…
Mount. "Finding the people abandoned to luxury and sacrilege, he broke the tables, deeming it a nation unworthy to be entrusted with the law of God." (Sulpitius i. 33.) By this action, Moses foreshewed the dissolution of the covenant with the Jews, that the new covenant might take place. (St. Augustine, q. 144.) The Jews kept the 17th of the fourth month as a fast, in memory of this event. (St. Jerome in Zac. viii.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables…
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.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 19. Moses’ anger waxed hot — He who had…
19. Moses’ anger waxed hot — He who had pleaded so powerfully in the mount (Exo_32:11-13) now feels the kindlings of a wrath akin to that which moved Jehovah to retributive judgment. Fiery indignation against sin is a passion as pure and worthy of God or man as love for truth and righteousness, for, indeed, the former is begotten of the latter.
Cast the tables… and brake them — Significant sign that Israel had broken the law written thereon.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 19. the dancing] For dancing at a religious ceremony,…
19. the dancing] For dancing at a religious ceremony, see on Exo_15:20.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (19) And the dancing.—Heb., and dances. What Moses saw…
(19) And the dancing.—Heb., and dances. What Moses saw was “the calf” which had already been mentioned, and “dances” which had not been mentioned, but which were now going on after the usual fashion of idolatrous festivity. Such dancing among Oriental nations was uniformly of a lascivious character. (Comp. Exo_32:25.)
He cast the tables out of his hands.—Comp. Deu_9:17. In righteous indignation, but perhaps with some revival of the hot temper which had led him astray in his younger days (Exo_2:12).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The dancing. Rather "dancing." There is no article; and…
The dancing. Rather "dancing." There is no article; and as the subject had not been mentioned before, the use of the article would have been unmeaning. Dances were a part of the religious ceremonial in most ancient nations. Sometimes they were solemn and grave, like the choric dances of the ancient Dorians, and (probably) that of David in front of the; (2Sa_6:5-22) sometimes festive and joyous, yet not immodest, like the Pyrrhic and other dances at Sparta, and the dancing of the Salii at Rome; but more often, and especially among the Oriental nations, they were of a loose and lascivious character. In Egypt, the dancers appear to have been professionals of a degraded class, and the dancing itself to have been always sensual and indecent; while in Syria, Asia Minor, and Babylon, dancing was a wild orgy, at once licentious and productive of a species of phrenzy. We must suspect that it was this sort of dancing in which the Israelites were engaged whence the terrible anger of Moses. He saw idolatry before his eyes, and idolatry with its worst accompaniments. In the extremity of his anger, he cast the tables out of his hands, dashed them violently against the ground, and brake them. For this act he is never reprehended. It is viewed as the natural outcome of a righteous indignation, provoked by the extreme wickedness of the people. We must bear this in mind when we come to consider the justice or injustice of the punishment which he proceeded to inflict on them for their sin (vers. 26-29).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 the tablets
the tablets
"the two stone slabs that Yahweh had written on"
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translationWords
cow
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 32:19 While the act of smashing the tablets might…
32:19 While the act of smashing the tablets might simply have been a reaction of fury, it might also have been Moses’ way of saying that the covenant with God was now irrevocably broken. God later reminded Moses rather pointedly that Moses was the one who had smashed the tablets (see 34:1).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.