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. He took the calf which they had made, and burned it with fire, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink it.
Moses said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you have brought a great sin on them?”
Aaron said, “Don’t let the anger of my lord grow hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods, which shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what has become of him.’ I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them take it off.’ So they gave it to me; and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”
When Moses saw that the people were out of control, (for Aaron had let them lose control, causing derision among their enemies), then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on Yahweh’s side, come to me!” All the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him.
He said to them, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, ‘Every man put his sword on his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and every man kill his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’ ” The sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. About three thousand men fell of the people that day. Moses said, “Consecrate yourselves today to Yahweh, for every man was against his son and against his brother, that he may give you a blessing today.”
On the next day, Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. Now I will go up to Yahweh. Perhaps I shall make atonement for your sin.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv20, 25, 27, 29 Partly to despite them of their idolatry, and partly…
Partly to despite them of their idolatry, and partly that they should have none occasion to remember it afterward.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv19–30 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 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.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv21, 30 Moses, having shown his just indignation against the sin…
Moses, having shown his just indignation against the sin of Israel by breaking the tables and burning the calf, now proceeds to reckon with the sinners and to call them to an account, herein acting as the representative of God, who is not only a holy God, and hates sin, but a just God, and is engaged in honour to punish it, Isa 59:18. Now,
I. He begins with Aaron, as God began with Adam, because he was the principal person, though not first in the transgression, but drawn into it. Observe here,
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1. The just reproof Moses gives him, Exo 32:21. He does not order him to be cut-off, as those (Exo 32:27) that had been the ring-leaders in the sin. Note, A great deal of difference will be made between those that presumptuously rush into sin and those that through infirmity are surprised into it, between those that overtake the fault that flees from them and those that are overtaken in the fault they flee from. See Gal 6:1. Not but that Aaron deserved to be cut off for this sin, and would have been so if Moses had not interceded particularly for him, as appears Deu 9:20. And having prevailed with God for him, to save him from ruin, he here expostulates with him, to bring him to repentance. He puts Aaron upon considering, (1.) What he had done to this people: Thou hast brought so great a sin upon them. The sin of idolatry is a great sin, so great a sin that the evil of it cannot be expressed; the people, as the first movers, might be said to bring the sin upon Aaron; but he being a magistrate, who should have suppressed it, and yet aiding and abetting it, might truly be said to bring it upon them, because he hardened their hearts and strengthened their hands in it. It is a shocking thing for governors to humour people in their sins, and give countenance to that to which they should be a terror. Observe, in general, Those who bring sin upon others, either by drawing them into it or encouraging them in it, do more mischief than they are aware of; we really hate those whom we either bring or suffer sin upon, Lev 19:17. Those that share in sin help to break their partners, and really ruin one another. (2.) What moved him to it: What did this people unto thee? He takes it for granted that it must needs be something more than ordinary that prevailed with Aaron to do such a thing, thus insinuating an excuse for him, because he knew that his heart was upright: "What did they? Did they accost thee fairly, and wheedle thee into it; and durst thou displease thy God, to please the people? Did they overcome thee by importunity; and hadst thou so little resolution left as to yield to the stream of a popular clamour? Did they threaten to stone thee; and couldest not thou have opposed God's threatenings to theirs, and frightened them worse than they could frighten thee?" Note, We must never be drawn into sin by any thing that man can say or do to us, for it will not justify us to say that we were so drawn in. Men can but tempt us to sin; they cannot force us. Men can but frighten us; if we do not comply, they cannot hurt us.
2. The frivolous excuse Aaron makes for himself. We will hope that he testified his repentance for the sin afterwards better than he did now; for what he says here has little in it of the language of a penitent. If a just man fall, he shall rise again, but perhaps not quickly. (1.) He deprecates the anger of Moses only, whereas he should have deprecated God's anger in the first place: Let not the anger of my Lord wax hot, Exo 32:22. (2.) He lays all the fault upon the people: They are set on mischief, and they said, Make us gods. It is natural to us to endeavour thus to transfer our guilt; we have it in our kind, Adam and Eve did so; sin is a brat that nobody is willing to own. Aaron was now the chief magistrate and had power over the people, and yet pleads that the people overpowered him; he that had authority to restrain them, yet had so little resolution as to yield to them. (3.) It is well if he did not intend a reflection upon Moses, as accessory to the sin, by staying so long on the mount, in repeating, without need, that invidious surmise of the people, As for this Moses, we know not what has become of him, Exo 32:23. (4.) He extenuates and conceals his own share in the sin, as if he had only bidden them break off their gold that they had about them, intending to make a hasty assay for the present, and to try what he could make of the gold that was next hand: and childishly insinuates that when he cast the gold into the fire it came out, either by accident or by the magic art of some of the mixed multitude (as the Jewish writers dream), in this shape; but not a word of his graving and fashioning it, Exo 32:24. But Moses relates to all ages what he did (Exo 32:4), though he himself here would not own it. Note, He that covers his sin shall not prosper, for sooner or later it will be discovered. Well, this was all Aaron had to say for himself; and he had better have said nothing, for his defence did but aggravate his offence; and yet he is not only spared, but preferred; as sin did abound, grace did much more abound.
II. The people are next to be judged for this sin. The approach of Moses soon spoiled their sport and turned their dancing into trembling. Those that hectored Aaron into a compliance with them in their sin durst not look Moses in the face, nor make the least opposition to the severity which he thought fit to use both against the idol and against the idolaters. Note, It is not impossible to make those sins which were committed with daring presumption appear contemptible, when the insolent perpetrators of them slink away overwhelmed in their own confusion. The king that sits upon the throne of judgment scatters away all evil with his eyes. Observe two things: -
1. How they were exposed to shame by their sin: The people were naked (Exo 32:25), not so much because they had some of them lost their ear-rings (that was inconsiderable), but because they had lost their integrity, and lay under the reproach of ingratitude to their best benefactor, and a treacherous revolt from their rightful Lord. It was a shame to them, and a perpetual blot, that they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox. Other nations boasted that they were true to their false gods; well may Israel blush for being false to the true God. Thus were they made naked, stripped of their ornaments, and exposed to contempt; stripped of their armour, and liable to insults. Thus our first parents, when they had sinned, became naked, to their shame. Note, Those that do dishonour to God really bring the greatest dishonour upon themselves: so Israel here did, and Moses was concerned to see it, though they themselves were not; he saw that they were naked.
2. The course that Moses took to roll away this reproach, not by concealing the sin, or putting any false colour upon it, but by punishing it, and so bearing a public testimony against it. Whenever it should be case in their teeth that they had made a calf in Horeb, they might have this to say, in answer to those that reproached them, that though it was true there were those that did so, yet justice was executed upon them. The government disallowed the sin, and suffered not the sinners to go unpunished. They did so, but they paid dearly for it. Thus (said God) thou shalt put the evil away, Deu 13:5. Observe here,
(1.) By whom vengeance was taken - by the children of Levi (Exo 32:26, Exo 32:28); not by the immediate hand of God himself, as on Nadab and Abihu, but by the sword of man, to teach them that idolatry was an iniquity to be punished by the judge, being a denial of the God that is above, Job 31:28; Deu 13:9. It was to be done by the sword of their own brethren, that the execution of justice might redound more to the honour of the nation. And, if they must fall now into the hands of man, better so than flee before their enemies. The innocent must be culled out to be the executioners of the guilty, that it might be the more effectual warning to themselves, that they did not the like another time; and the putting of them upon such an unpleasant service, and so much against the grain as this must needs be, to kill their next neighbours, was a punishment to them too for not appearing sooner to prevent the sin, and make head against it. The Levites particularly were employed in doing this execution; for, it should seem, there were more of them than of any other tribe that had kept themselves free from the contagion, which was the more laudable because Aaron, the head of their tribe, was so deeply concerned in it. Now here we are told, [1.] How the Levites were called out to this service: Moses stood in the gate of the camp, the place of judgment; there he displayed a banner, as it were, because of the truth, to enlist soldiers for God. He proclaimed, Who is on the Lord's side? The idolaters had set up the golden calf for their standard, and now Moses set up his, in opposition to them. Now Moses clad himself with zeal as with a robe, and summoned all those to appear forthwith that were on God's side, against the golden calf. He does not proclaim, as Jehu, "Who is on my side (Kg2 9:32), to avenge the indignity done to me?" but, Who is on the Lord's side? It was God's cause that he espoused against the evil-doers, Psa 94:16. Note, First, There are two great interests on foot in the world, with the one or the other of which all the children of men are siding. The interest of sin and wickedness is the devil's interest, and all wicked people side with that interest; the interest of truth and holiness is God's interest, with which all godly people side; and it is a case that will not admit a neutrality. Secondly, It concerns us all to enquire whether we are on the Lord's side or not. Thirdly, Those who are on his side are comparatively but few, and sometimes seem fewer than really they are. Fourthly, God does sometimes call out those that are on his side to appear for him, as witnesses, as soldiers, as intercessors. [2.] How they were commissioned for this service (Exo 32:27): Slay every man his brother, that is, "Slay all those that you know to have been active for the making and worshipping of the golden calf, though they were your own nearest relations, or dearest friends." The crime was committed publicly, the Levites saw who of their acquaintance were concerned in it, and therefore needed no other direction than their own knowledge whom to slay. And probably the greatest part of those that were guilty were known, and known to be so, by some or other of the Levites who were employed in the execution. Yet, it should seem, they were to slay those only whom they found abroad in the streets of the camp; for it might be hoped that those who had retired into their tents were ashamed of what they had done, and were upon their knees, repenting. Those are marked for ruin who persist in sin, and are not ashamed of the abominations they have committed, Jer 8:12. But how durst the Levites encounter so great a body, who probably were much enraged by the burning of their calf? It is easy to account for this; a sense of guilt disheartened the delinquents, and a divine commission animated the executioners. And one thing that put life into them was that Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves to day to the Lord, that he may bestow a blessing upon you, thereby intimating to them that they now stood fair for preferment and that, if they would but signalize themselves upon this occasion, it would be construed into such a consecration of themselves to God, and to his service, as would put upon their tribe a perpetual honour. Those that consecrate themselves to the Lord he will set apart for himself. Those that do the duty shall have the dignity; and, if we do signal services for God, he will bestow especial blessings upon us. There was a blessing designed for the tribe of Levi; now says Moses, "Consecrate yourselves to the Lord, that you may qualify yourselves to receive the blessing." The Levites were to assist in the offering of sacrifice to God; and now they must begin with the offering of these sacrifices to the honour of divine justice. Those that are to minister about holy things must be not only sincere and serious, but warm and zealous, bold and courageous, for God and godliness. Thus all Christians, but especially ministers, must forsake father and mother, and prefer the service of Christ and his interest far before their nearest and dearest relations; for if we love our relations better than Christ we are not worthy of him. See how this zeal of the Levites is applauded, Deu 33:9.
(2.) On whom vengeance is taken: There fell of the people that day about 3000 men, Exo 32:28. Probably these were but few, in comparison with the many that were guilty; but these were the men that headed the rebellion, and were therefore picked out, to be made examples of, for terror to all others. Those that in the morning were shouting and dancing before night were dying in their own blood; such a sudden change do the judgments of God sometimes make with sinners that are secure and jovial in their sin, as with Belshazzar by the hand-writing upon the wall. This is written for warning to us. Co1 10:7, Neither be you idolaters, as were some of them.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv19–30 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28 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 On vv19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30 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 On vv19, 20, 22, 25, 26, 29, 30 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30 (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 On vv19–30 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.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv24, 26, 27, 29 There came out this calf.
Exo_32:24
There came out this calf.
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Aarons excuse
I. There never was a speech more true to one disposition of our human nature than this of Aaron. We are all ready to lay the blame on the furnaces. The fire did it, we are all of us ready enough to say. In better times we might have been better, broader men, but now, behold, God puts us into the fire, and we came out thus. Our age, our society, is what, with this figure taken out of the old story of Exodus, we have been calling it. It is the furnace. Its fire can set, and fix, and fasten what the man puts into it. But, properly speaking, it can create no character. It can make no truly faithful soul a doubter. It never did. It never can.
II. The subtlety and attractiveness of this excuse extends not only to the results which we see coming forth in ourselves; it covers also the fortunes of those for whom we are responsible. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister, fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls.
III. There is delusion and self-deception in this excuse. Very rarely indeed does a man excuse himself to other men and yet remain absolutely unexcused in his own eyes. Often the very way to help ourselves most to a result which we have set before ourselves is just to put ourselves into a current which is sweeping on that way, and then lie still, and let the current do the rest, and in all such cases it is so easy to ignore or to forget the first step, and so to say that it is only the drift of the current which is to blame for the dreary shore on which at last our lives are cast up by the stream.
IV. If the world is thus full of the Aaron spirit, where are we to find its cure? Its source is a vague and defective sense of personality. I cannot look for its cure anywhere short of that great assertion of the human personality which is made when a man personally enters into the power of Jesus Christ. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)
Shifting responsibility
I. Aaron blamed society. Thus is it with men now. Yielding to the pressure of society, we do not live out our highest convictions.
1. We defer to public opinion. Great is the tyranny of public opinion, and many dare not brave it. Aaron dare not in the text, and thousands still are overawed by it. We like to be talked about, but not against. We stay short of being what we ought to be, of doing what we ought to do, for fear of the adverse criticism of our neighbours, work-fellows, countrymen.
2. We defer to public custom. The Jewish rabble wanted images, such as were in Egypt, and Aaron had not courage to resist the demand. So we often bow to the questionable customs of society. Our convictions are otherwise, but we have not the bravery to be singular--we cast a grain of incense on the worlds altar when we ought to hurl a stone at its gods.
3. We defer to public violence. They gathered themselves together unto (verse 1)--rather against--Aaron in a tumultuous manner, to compel him to do what they wished. And Aaron was coerced by them. So we often fear the anger, menace, violence of those around us, and act a consciously unworthy part. Aaron in the text blaming the people is a picture of thousands of us to-day! We do not wish to act thus and thus, but we are the victims of our social surroundings. It is not I, but the people. We, none of us, are guilty; it is the crowd behind which pushes us.
II. He blamed nature. I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. As if it were not his fault, but natures. He says nothing about the mould that he made; nothing about the graving tool that he used (verse 4); but nature has done it--it has done itself. So do we reason still.
1. We blame nature for our sins. We ignore the fact that we failed to interpose our will; that we fed the fires of passion; that in making preparation for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, we constructed the mould.
2. We blame nature for our miseries.
Lessons:
1. The childishness of this method of shifting responsibility.
2. The foolishness of it.
3. The uselessness of it. (W. L. Watkinson.)
Aarons apology
Aarons excuse is the standing excuse of at least one large class among us. Servants use it every day. Who has not heard them plead? Please, maam, I couldnt help it; it broke in my hands. As if it were not they, but the wilful jug or dish which was responsible for the fracture, or some malign fate which mocks at human endeavour and care. It was an accident has been their sigh ever since domestic service became an institution among us. But is the plea confined to them? Do you not also hear it from the lips of every child? I didnt do it--they are all quite sure of that; though, if they did not do it, it would be hard indeed to say who did. Here are two large classes, then, to whom Aarons excuse is familiar; and to one of these classes we all belonged in our time. But are there no more? Most of you will remember that inimitable scene in Adam Bede in which Mrs. Poyser, while rating the clumsy Molly for her broken jug of beer, herself drops a still more precious jug from her angry fingers, and exclaims: Did anybody ever see the like? The jugs are bewitched, I think. You will remember how she proceeds to argue that theres times when the crockery seems alive, an flies out o your hand like a bird, and concludes, philosophically enough, that what is to be broke will be broke. Possibly most of us have known mistresses who, while indignantly repudiating the common excuse of their maids, have nevertheless condescended to employ it in their own behalf. And what bankrupt tradesman, or broken merchant, or fraudulent banker is there who does not plead the same, or a similar, excuse? It is hardly ever their fault that they cannot pay twenty shillings in the pound; it is their misfortune. Things have gone against them. Circumstances over which they have no control have been their ruin--not their own rashness, or dishonest discounts, or risky speculations. They put their capital into that shop, that firm, that bank, and, lo, there came out this ugly calf of bankruptcy! But you must not blame them; it is the furnace that was in fault. And if mistresses no less than their maids, and men of business no less than their wives, attribute to accident, mischance, or a malignant and mysterious fate, results of which the cause might be found much nearer home, scholars no less than men of business, men of science no less than scholars, Christian commentators no less than men of science, too often betake themselves to the same egregrious line of argument and excuse. There are illustrations and repetitions and modifications of Aarons apology which touch us closer home. The man who is a sinner--as which of us is not?--has it perpetually on his lips. How often, when arraigned at the bar of Conscience or taken to task by Authority, have we urged that we really could not help ourselves; that, to use Mrs. Poysers word, we were bewitched by some evil and malignant power; that it was impossible to keep the law we had transgressed, and that what is to be broken will and must be broken? A hot temper leaps oer a cold decree. With passions so fierce and strong as mine, with a natural and hereditary bias to evil, exposed to temptations so numerous and so nicely adjusted to my temperament, why should I be blamed, why should I overmuch blame myself, if now and then I have overleaped the cold and strict requirements of the law? Such as I am, in such a world as this, with a passionate craving for immediate enjoyment, exposed to forces so powerful and so constant in their operation, hampered by conditions so inauspicious, how could I do otherwise than I have done? Is it my fault that, with desire and opportunity conspiring against me, I have sometimes been overmastered or betrayed by them, and broken a commandment which no man has always kept?. . . Well, Aarons excuse for himself has reminded us of a good many excuses as irrational and absurd as his which men make to this day. And we have seen and acknowledged that there is some element of truth in them; that what we call accident does play a certain part in our life and the lives of our fellows. But though, in the abstract, we cannot define this mysterious power, or determine exactly how far we are subject to it, in conduct and practice we have no great difficulty in dealing with it. We make allowance for our servants; we admit that even the most careful must meet with an accident sometimes, and that there are times even when a small series of such accidents are almost certain to tread on each others heels. Nevertheless, if, after due trial, we find that a servant has contracted a constant and incorrigible habit of breaking whatever is breakable, we promptly dismiss her as too unfortunate for us, or as abnormally clumsy, or as wilfully negligent. We make allowance, too, for the accidents of commerce; we confess that now and then a man may fail honourably because he fails through no fault of his own. But if we meet with a man who has failed in almost everything he has undertaken, and who has spent half his time in the Court of Insolvency and its purlieus, we are in no hurry to associate ourselves with him or to assist him; nay, unless he can bring surprisingly good evidence to the contrary, we set him down as a lazy vagabond or an unscrupulous rogue. Just so we make, or ought to make, allowance for a man who is overtaken by a sin. And for ourselves, my brethren, let us have done with this poor subterfuge, which we know to be, for us at least, a mere refuge of lies even as we run into it. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Excuses for sin
Here is a man all gross and sensual, a man still young who has already lost the freshness, glory, and purity of youth. Suppose you question him about his life. You expect him to be ashamed, repentant. There is not a sign of anything like that! He says: I am the victim of circumstances. What a corrupt, licentious, profane age this is in which we live! When I was in college I got into a bad set. When I went into business I was surrounded by bad influences. When I grew rich, men flattered me. When I grew poor, men bullied me. The world has made me what I am, this fiery, passionate, wicked world. I had in my hands the gold of my boyhood which God gave me. Then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. Another man is not a profligate, but is a miser, or a mere business machine. What can you ask of me? he says; this is a mercantile community. The business man who does not attend to his business goes to the wall. I am what this intense commercial life has made me. I put my life in there, and it came out this. And then he gazes fondly at his golden calf, and his knees bend under him with the old long habit of worshipping it, and he loves it still, even while he abuses and disowns it. And so with the woman of society. The fire made me this, she says of her frivolity and pride. And so of the politician and his selfishness and partisanship. I put my principles into the furnace, and this came out. And so of the bigot and his bigotry, the one-sided Conservative with his stubborn resistance to all progress, the one-sided Radical with his ruthless iconoclasm. So of all partial and fanatical men. The furnace made us, they are ready to declare. Remember that the subtlety and attractiveness of this excuse, this plausible attributing of power to inanimate things and exterior conditions to create what only man can make, extends not only to the results which we see coming forth in ourselves; it covers also the fortunes of those for whom we are responsible. The father says of his profligate son, for whom he has never done one wise or vigorous thing to make a noble and pure-minded man: I cannot tell how it has come. It has not been my fault. I put him into the world, and this came out. The father whose faith has been mean and selfish says the same of his boy who is a sceptic. Everywhere there is this cowardly casting off of responsibilities upon the dead circumstances around us. It is a very hard treatment of the poor, dumb, helpless world which cannot answer to defend itself. It takes us as we give ourselves to it. It is our minister fulfilling our commissions for us upon our own souls. If we say to it, Make us noble, it does make us noble. If we say to it, Make us mean, it does make us mean. And then we take the nobility and say, Behold, how noble I have made myself. And we take the meanness and say, See how mean the world has made me.. . . The only hope for any of us is in a perfectly honest manliness to claim our sins. I did it, I did it, let me say of all my wickedness. Let me refuse to listen for one moment to any voice which would make my sins less mine. It is the only honest and the only hopeful way, the only way to know and be ourselves. When we have done that, then we are ready for the gospel, ready for all that Christ wants to show us that we may become, and for all the powerful grace by which He wants to make us be it perfectly. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv21, 25, 30 MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_32:21-25
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_32:21-25
SHIFTING RESPONSIBILITY
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“And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it to me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.”
Aaron has acted a very sorry part at a great crisis, and his conduct, and the apology he made for it, are worthy of being attentively considered by us, as we are very apt to fall into similar errors. Being charged with the great sin of which he was guilty, Aaron sought to shift the responsibility, and rest the blame elsewhere.
I. He blamed society. “And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people that they are set on mischief,” Exo_32:22. “So they gave it me,” Exo_32:24.
Thus is it with men now. Yielding to the pressure of society, we do not live out our highest convictions. We defer to public opinion. Great is the tyranny of public opinion, and many dare not brave it. Aaron dare not in the text, and thousands still are overawed by it. We like to be talked about, but not against. We stay short of being what we ought to be, of doing what we ought to do, for fear of the adverse criticism of our neighbours, work-fellows, countrymen. We defer to public custom. The Jewish rabble wanted images, such as were in Egypt, and Aaron had not courage to resist the demand. So we often bow to the questionable customs of society. Our convictions are otherwise, but we have not the bravery to be singular—we cast a grain of incense on the world’s altar when we ought to hurl a stone at its gods. We defer to public violence. “They gathered themselves together unto,” Exo_32:1—rather “against”—Aaron in a tumultuous manner, to compel him to do what they wished. And Aaron was coerced by them. So we often fear the anger, menace, violence of those around us, and act a consciously unworthy part. Aaron in the text blaming “the people” is a picture of thousands of us to-day! We do not wish to act thus and thus, but we are the victims of our social surroundings. It is not I, but the people. We, none of us, are guilty, it is the crowd behind which pushes us.
II. He blamed nature. “I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.” As if it were not his fault, but nature’s. He says nothing about the mould that he made; nothing about the graving tool that he used, Exo_32:4; but nature has done it—it has done itself. So do we reason still.
1. We blame nature for our sins. We cannot hold ourselves responsible for various sins; we look upon them as springing from nature, and as not being amenable to control. We ignore the fact that we failed to interpose our will; that we fed the fires of passion; that in making preparation for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof, we constructed the mould.
2. We blame nature for our miseries. Aaron seems to represent himself as an ill-used man—one to whom nature has been unkind. His miseries were selfcreated, but he fumbles about to represent them as an unfortunate outcome of nature. So do we act still. The other night we heard a man the worse for liquor, abusing a telegraph pole against which he had bruised his face. The spectators smiled; but they might have seen in the complaining sot a striking picture of poor foolish human nature in general. We foolishly, wilfully dash ourselves against the great laws of the creation, and then, bruised and weeping, rail against that creation, all of whose laws are pure and sublime. We transgress the physical laws on which health depends, and there comes out the sickly calf; we transgress the moral laws on which happiness depends, and there comes out the wretched calf; we transgress the intellectual laws on which knowledge depends, and there comes out the stupid calf; we transgress the social and political laws on which national prosperity depends, and there comes out the bloody calves of civil strife and revolution; we transgress the economical laws on which wealth depends, and there comes out the lean and ill-favoured calf of poverty. We blame nature for a score of ugly things by which we are plagued when they are simply the consequences of our own folly.
A word—
1. As to the childishness of this method of shifting responsibility. They did it; is did it. How childish! The little children say, “It did it—it fell—it broke,” and their seniors smile at the transparent sophistry. But do not the seniors also the same? Blaming society, their body, nature? “The calf came out!” He was the calf, and we all feel that he was, and we are also when we shirk responsibility, and speak of it and them. We are men, gifted with the power of self-determination, and it is supremely ignoble and childish to attempt to rest the onus of our conduct on the laws of nature or the exactions of society.
2. The foolishness of it. Sin not only makes cowards of us all, but fools also. They did it; it did it. What shuffling and foolish excuses! How irrational! “Aaron’s reply to the reproachful question of Moses is designedly obscure and confused, because he was himself conscious of the great crime which his fatal want of moral courage had abetted.”—Kalisch (in loco). The reason is confused before we sin, and sinning confuses it all the more, and we awkwardly seek to veil our sin and shame by the most unmanly and illogical vindications.
3. The uselessness of it. Aaron is severely blamed and censured. Moses gives no reply to the childish apology, but directly charges the crime home upon Aaron. “Thou hast brought so great sin upon them,” Exo_32:21. “Aaron had made them naked,” Exo_32:25. See also Deu_9:20. So will it be with us all in the great day of judgment and retribution; our personal responsibility will be insisted upon, and the flimsy reasonings by which we sought to evade that responsibility will be scattered to the winds.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Idol-Idiosyncrasy. Exo_32:1-35.
(1.) Material idolatry has passed away among civilised nations in its literal import. As Macmillan says, the old worship of stocks and stones is now impossible among a professedly Christian people. But although the outward mode has passed away, the essence of the temptation remains the same. Human society is changed, but human nature is unchanged. The impulse which led Israel to seek the golden calf is as strong as ever, and images are set up and worshipped now as fantastic as any pagan fetish or joss. For what is idolatry! Is it not in its essence the lowering of the idea of God and of God’s nature, and the exaltation of a dead image above a man’s own living spirit! Is not an idol whatever is loved more than God, whatever is depended upon for happiness and help independent of God?
(2.) Sooner or later, as Moses pounded the calf and gave the Israelites the dust to drink in punishment of their idolatry, will all such moral idolaters have to drink the dust of their idols. Our sin will become our punishment, our idols our scourges. God is a jealous God, and every soul that turns aside from His love to the lying vanities of the world must drink the bitter water of jealousy, filled with the dust of the bruised and mutilated idols of spiritual idolatry: “This shall ye have at My hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow.”
“Thou art the man within whose heart’s deep cell
All evil sleeping lies;
Lust, in a dark hour waking, breaks the spell,
And straightway there arise
Monsters of evil thoughts and base desire.”
—Greok.
Responsibility! Exo_32:21-24. Aaron sought to shift the responsibility of this apostacy from his own shoulders to those of others.
1. He blamed the people (Exo_32:22) for
(1) desiring, and
(2) demanding.
2. He blamed the furnace (Exo_32:24) for
(1) protecting, and
(2) producing. Kalisch says that Aaron’s reply to the reproachful question of Moses is designedly obscure and confused, because he was himself conscious of the great crime which his fatal want of moral courage had abetted. A crazy house is propped up by one support; but conscious of its insecurity, the owner places a second to keep up the structure. Aaron was sensible of the flimsiness of his defence, and he must need prop it up with two supports, which, after all, disclosed its insecurity.
“Sin and shame are ever tied together
With Gordian knots, of such a strong thread spun,
They cannot without violence be undone.”
Personal Responsibility! Exo_32:23. That puckered mouth had once known smiles! Those withered, parchment-like cheeks had once worn the rose bloom! Those hungry eyes had once been like those of doves, washed with milk and fitly set! Those lean, clutching hands had once tenderly embraced a fair and loved form! And that heart, dry and worthless as a decayed nut-kernel, had once been soft and gushing with love and sympathy! Now he was a miser, smiling only as he saw the yellow dross and clutched the golden coins. To bleed a stone were easier than to find pity and unselfish sympathy for the woes and wants of others. He was a miser; yet he had his moments when conscience, like a second Moses to Aaron, would ask, “What is this that thou hast done!” Adam-like, Aaron-like, Saul-like, aye, man-like, he would reply to himself, “She made me what I am.” He had loved, and his love had proved faithless—had, on the very morning of their intended marriage, been wedded to another. She had made him love gold, become selfish and avaricious, live a hard and unsympathetic life. “She made me!” “No, Aaron, death before dishonour.” Fearing the anger, menace, and violence of the Israelites, he acted a consciously unworthy part, and all the more because he was their leader pro tempore. We are what we make ourselves, not what others make us—the victims of our fears or follies, our lusts or lingerings after evil.
“Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”
—Beaumont.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v30 Exo 32:1 - - Exo 32:8; Exo 32:30 -…
Exodus
THE GOLDEN CALF
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Exo 32:1 - - Exo 32:8; Exo 32:30 - - Exo 32:35.
It was not yet six weeks since the people had sworn, ‘All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient.’ The blood of the covenant, sprinkled on them, was scarcely dry when they flung off allegiance to Jehovah. Such short-lived loyalty to Him can never have been genuine. That mob of slaves was galvanised by Moses into obedience; and since their acceptance of Jehovah was in reality only yielding to the power of one strong will and its earnest faith, of course it collapsed as soon as Moses disappeared.
We have to note, first, the people’s universal revolt. The language of Exo 32:1 may easily hide to a careless reader the gravity and unanimity of the apostasy. ‘The people gathered themselves together.’ It was a national rebellion, a flood which swept away even some faithful, timid hearts. No voices ventured to protest. What were the elders, who shortly before ‘saw the God of Israel,’ doing to be passive at such a crisis? Was there no one to bid the fickle multitude look up to the summit overhead, where the red flames glowed, or to remind them of the hosts of Egypt lying stark and dead on the shore? Was Miriam cowed too, and her song forgotten?
We need not cast stones at these people; for we also have short memories for either the terrible or the gracious revelations of God in our own lives. But we may learn the lesson that God’s lovers have to set themselves sometimes dead against the rush of popular feeling, and that there are times when silence or compliance is sin.
It would have been easy for the rebels to have ignored Aaron, and made gods for themselves. But they desired to involve him in their apostasy, and to get ‘official sanction’ for it. He had been left by Moses as his lieutenant, and so to get him implicated was to stamp the movement as a regular and entire revolt.
The demand ‘to make gods’ {or, more probably, ‘a god’} flew in the face of both the first and second commandments. For Jehovah, who had forbidden the forming of any image, was denied in the act of making it. To disobey Him was to cast Him off. The ground of the rebellion was the craving for a visible object of trust and a visible guide, as is seen by the reason assigned for the demand for an image. Moses was out of sight; they must have something to look at as their leader. Moses had disappeared, and, to these people who had only been heaved up to the height of believing in Jehovah by Moses, Jehovah had disappeared with him. They sank down again to the level of other races as soon as that strong lever ceased to lift their heavy apprehensions.
How ridiculous the assertion that they did not know what had become of Moses! They knew that he was up there with Jehovah. The elders could have told them that. The fire on the mount might have burned in on all minds the confirmation. Note, too, the black ingratitude and plain denial of Jehovah in ‘the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt.’ They refuse to recognise God’s part. It was Moses only who had done it; and now that he is gone they must have a visible god, like other nations.
Still sadder than their sense-bound wish is Aaron’s compliance. He knew as well as we do what he should have said, but, like many another man in influential position, when beset by popular cries, he was frightened, and yielded when he should have ‘set his face like a flint.’ His compliance has in essentials been often repeated, especially by priests and ministers of religion who have lent their superior abilities or opportunities to carry out the wishes of the ignorant populace, and debased religion or watered down its prohibitions, to please and retain hold of them. The Church has incorporated much from heathenism. Roman Catholic missionaries have permitted ‘converts’ to keep their old usages. Protestant teachers have acquiesced in, and been content to find the brains to carry out, compromises between sense and soul, God’s commands and men’s inclinations.
We need not discuss the metallurgy of Exo 32:4. But clearly Aaron asked for the earrings, not, as some would have it, hoping that vanity and covetousness would hinder their being given, but simply in order to get gold for the bad work which he was ready to do. The reason for making the thing in the shape of a calf is probably the Egyptian worship of Apis in that form, which would be familiar to the people.
We must note that it was the people who said, ‘These be thy gods, O Israel!’ Aaron seems to keep in the rear, as it were. He makes the calf, and hands it over, and leaves them to hail it and worship. Like all cowards, he thought that he was lessening his guilt by thus keeping in the background. Feeble natures are fond of such subterfuges, and deceive themselves by them; but they do not shift their sin off their shoulders.
Then he comes in again with an impotent attempt to diminish the gravity of the revolt. ‘When he saw this,’ he tried to turn the flood into another channel, and so proclaimed a ‘feast to Jehovah’ !-as if He could be worshipped by flagrant defiance of His commandments, or as if He had not been disavowed by the ascription to the calf, made that morning out of their own trinkets, of the deliverance from Egypt. A poor, inconsequential attempt to save appearances and hallow sin by writing God’s name on it! The ‘god’ whom the Israelites worshipped under the image of a calf, was no less another ‘god before Me,’ though it was called by the name of Jehovah. If the people had their idol, it mattered nothing to them, and it mattered as little to Jehovah, what ‘name’ it bore. The wild orgies of the morrow were not the worship which He accepts.
What a contrast between the plain and the mountain! Below, the shameful feast, with its parody of sacrifice and its sequel of lust-inflamed dancing; above, the awful colloquy between the all-seeing righteous Judge and the intercessor! The people had cast off Jehovah, and Jehovah no more calls them ‘My,’ but ‘thy people.’ They had ascribed their Exodus first to Moses, and next to the calf. Jehovah speaks of it as the work of Moses.
A terrible separation of Himself from them lies in ‘thy people, which thou broughtest up,’ and Moses’ bold rejoinder emphasises the relation and act which Jehovah seems to suppress {Exo 32:11}. Observe that the divine voice refuses to give any weight to Aaron’s trick of compromise. These are no worshippers of Jehovah who are howling and dancing below there. They are ‘worshipping it, and sacrificing to it,’ not to Him. The cloaks of sin may partly cover its ugliness here, but they are transparent to His eyes, and many a piece of worship, which is said to be directed to Him, is, in His sight, rank idolatry.
We do not deal with the magnificent courage of Moses, his single-handed arresting of the wild rebellion, and the severe punishment by which he trampled out the fire. But we must keep his severity in mind if we would rightly judge his self-sacrificing devotion, and his self-sacrificing devotion if we would rightly judge his severity.
No words of ours can make more sublime his utter self-abandonment for the sake of the people among whom he had just been flaming in wrath, and smiting like a destroying angel. That was a great soul which had for its poles such justice and such love. The very words of his prayer, in their abruptness, witness to his deep emotion. ‘If Thou wilt forgive their sin’ stands as an incomplete sentence, left incomplete because the speaker is so profoundly moved. Sometimes broken words are the best witnesses of our earnestness. The alternative clause reaches the high-water mark of passionate love, ready to give up everything for the sake of its objects. The ‘book of life’ is often spoken of in Scripture, and it is an interesting study to bring together the places where the idea occurs {see Psa 69:28; Dan 12:1; Php 4:3; Rev 3:5}. The allusion is to the citizens’ roll {Psa 87:6}. Those whose names are written there have the privileges of citizenship, and, as it is the ‘book of life’ {or ‘of the living’}, life in the widest sense is secured to them. To blot out of it, therefore, is to cut a man off from fellowship in the city of God, and from participation in life.
Moses was so absorbed in his vocation that his life was less to him than the well-being of Israel. How far he saw into the darkness beyond the grave we cannot say; but, at least, he was content, and desirous to die on earth, if thereby Israel might continue to be God’s people. And probably he had some gleam of light beyond, which enhanced the greatness of his offered sacrifice. To die, whatever loss of communion with God that involved here or hereafter, would be sweet if thereby he could purchase Israel’s restoration to God’s favour. We cannot but think of Paul willing to be separated from Christ for his brethren’s sake.
We may well think of a greater than Moses or Paul, who did bear the loss which they were willing to bear, and died that sin might be forgiven. Moses was a true type of Christ in that act of supreme self-sacrifice; and all the heroism, the identification of himself with his people, the love which willingly accepts death, that makes his prayer one of the greatest deeds on the page of history, are repeated in infinitely sweeter, more heart-subduing fashion in the story of the Cross. Let us not omit duly to honour the servant; let us not neglect to honour and love infinitely more the Lord. ‘This man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses.’ Let us see that we render Him
‘Thanks never ceasing,
And infinite love.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v30 (See Scofield "Exo 29:33").
atonement
(See Scofield "Exo 29:33").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv25, 30 The Slaughter of the Idolaters
The Slaughter of the Idolaters
v. 25. And when Moses saw that the people were naked; they had stripped themselves of their ornaments and had also neglected to keep the camp properly protected; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies, he had given them free reign in their festivities, a fact which caused the camp to be unprotected and exposed the children of Israel to derision in more than one respect;)
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v. 26. then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Who is on the Lord’s side; who will take the Lord’s part? Let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. They were the first to turn from their sin in true repentance and to show their willingness to make amends for their sin.
v. 27. And he said unto them, Thus saith 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, that is, passing through the length of the camp twice, going and returning, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. No matter how close the relationship, there was to be indiscriminate slaughter: all those whom it would strike should die.
v. 28. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
v. 29. For Moses had said, before the men of Levi went forth to the slaughter, 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. They were to dedicate themselves to the Lord by this implicit and unquestioning obedience, which disregarded the ties of even the closest relationship in order to secure the blessing of the Lord. For the Christians also it often becomes necessary to deny the nearest relatives, namely, when the alternative is Christ or the world. Obedience toward our Lord must always be the first consideration.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv19, 21, 25, 28, 30 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 On vv19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 30 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.