Though you and I are no less sinful and idolatrous than the Israelites and no less prone to make light of or excuse our sin than Aaron, we have One who is greater than Moses who has made atonement for our sins. Being both eternal God and the only sinless man, Jesus alone was fit and able to give Himself as a perfect and lasting atonement for all of the sins of all His people. And that is precisely what He did, not upon Sinai, but upon the hill of Golgotha.
After studying through the several chapters of instructions that Yahweh gave to Moses regarding the building and design of the tabernacle, our previous text brought our attention to what the Israelites were doing at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses was meeting with God. Sadly, even while God was giving his prophet the plans for the tent where He would dwell in the midst of His newly redeemed people, they were already turning aside from the covenant that they promised to keep. They gathered around Aaron and demanded that he make an idol for them, and though Aaron apparently tried to pretend that the golden calf represented Yahweh, both he and the Israelites were fully guilty of violating the First and Second Commandments. Although God said that He ready to consume Israel in His wrath, Moses interceded for the people, and the LORD relented from His anger.
Yet that is not the end of the incident of the golden calf. Although Moses’ initial intercession stayed the wrath of God from falling upon the Israelites, the people had still committed a great sin that could not be simply overlooked. Thus, while the immediate danger of God’s fiery judgment was no longer overhead, the remainder of chapter 32 deals with the ongoing consequence of Israel’s idolatry.
A Broken Covenant: Verses 15–20
Even though we already know what the Israelites have been doing, the suspense of the passage is raised again by slowly taking us down the mountain with Moses and Joshua.
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.”
These four verses force us to wait in suspense over what will happen when Moses encounters the people. Verses 15-16 linger over the tablets that Moses carried with him down the mountain, reminding us as explicitly as possible that these were the work of God and written by God Himself. As one commentator notes, these tablets were the most precious and valuable items on earth, and they were the written documentation of God’s covenant with Israel. A covenant that the people had already broken.
Verses 17-18 then linger on the noise that Moses and Joshua hear coming down the mountain. Even though the people were supposedly having a feast to Yahweh (at least that is what Aaron told himself), Joshua mistakes the noise of their feasting for the sounds of war. But Moses points out that the noise is neither of defeat nor victory; it is the sound of partying. As Ryken notes, “the Israelites were singing to an image of a grass-eating, milk-producing, moo-sounding cow. Someone would almost have to be drunk to worship such a deity, and the Israelites probably were.”
Indeed, the description of Israel as making noise reminds me of C. S. Lewis’ thought on noise through the mouth of the demon Screwtape:
Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it. Research is in progress.
Verse 19 then describes the bursting of the dam.
And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
Even though the LORD had already told Moses what was happening at the foot of the mountain, the prophet’s anger was kindled whenever he saw it with his own eyes. Moses then takes two immediate actions. First, he threw the tablets to the ground and broke them in front of the people. Since Moses is not rebuked for this action, we can safely assume that Moses was not being controlled by his anger, which would have been sinful. Rather, as Stuart argues, “Moses’ breaking of the tablets was an important symbolic act done carefully, deliberately, and openly for the benefit of the Israelites… It was a reasoned, overt act demonstrating a fact (the covenant had been broken) and warning of a consequence (divine wrath—far worse than the anger of Moses)” (677). Furthermore, Ryken comments that:
By breaking the tablets, Moses showed that the Israelites had broken the whole law. The Bible says that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (Jas. 2:10). Actually, the Israelites stumbled at more than one point. But the principle still applies: By worshiping the golden calf, they had broken the whole law of God.
Second, Moses destroyed the golden calf, which all of Israel is blamed for making. Again, Moses’ actions here do not indicate that he was blind with rage. Instead, he burned the idol with fire, ground up the charred remains into powder, and scattered them into Israel’s water source so that the people would be drinking their own false god. Stuart points out that Moses probably did not have all of Israel line up to drink from the water; rather, by scattering it over their water source, every time they got a drink of water they were drinking the golden calf. This all was a means of thoroughly polluting the gold used for the golden calf. It was burned to disfigurement, ground into dust, and drunk.
But what is the next logical implication of what became of the golden calf? The god that they were just worshiping literally became a part of their excrement.
If that seems undignified and offensive, that is precisely the point. Sin, particularly idolatry, is undignified and offensive to the Holy One. Also, this is not the last time that the Bible leaves us to make such an implication. The wicked Queen Jezebel died by fall from a window and being eaten by dogs. Thus, the once seemingly great queen may very well have ended up fouling the sandal of some poor Israelite. This is a strong warning to we whose hearts are idol factories. In 1 Kings 11:4, false gods are referred to using the same word that is translated as vanity all through Ecclesiastes. Idols are nothings, and as Psalm 115:8 warns, “those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”
A Cowardly Priest: Verses 21–24
In these verses, Moses confronts Aaron, who was clearly supposed to be in charge of the people while Moses was upon the mountain, and he does so with only one question: What did the people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them? Notice that the careful wording of this question shows that Moses knew, whether through revelation or simply intuition, where the fault lay. He knew that the people were at fault somehow for pressing Aaron into making the golden calf. However, he is by no means excusing Aaron, for he places the blame squarely on Aaron for bringing such a great sin upon them.
What then is Aaron’s answer?
And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”