E-Vangelica Online Bible Study

By Henry Pearce

Friends: This will be the last lesson in this series. Next week, I begin a new ministry as the pastor of the Medina Presbyterian Church in Medina, Ohio. It's possible that an on-line Bible study may be posted on that congregation's website beginning early in 2012. It has been a great pleasure studying the scriptures with you over the last few years. May God richly bless you and make his Word known to you.

Lesson 2.040

December 9, 2011

Exodus 32:1-33:6, The Golden Calf, Part II

In our last lesson, we read the passage describing the Hebrews' disastrous decision to have Aaron make them a golden calf (or, probably more precisely, "bull calf"). We looked closely at the first six verses of the passage, which told about what happened. In this lesson, we will start from there, and consider the fallout from the peoples' idolatry.

Verse 7 finds God and Moses on top of the mountain, where God has been giving Moses various laws, as well as the instructions for making the Tabernacle and its furnishings, over a period of forty days. From this vantage point on the mountaintop, God sees the people's disgraceful worship directed toward the idol and their drunken revelry (apparently including an orgy of some sort). God begins by giving Moses a command, translated by our NIV Bible as, "Go down." However, some translators say that the Hebrew phrase God uses is stronger than that - something more like, "Get down there!"

God describes the scene taking place at the foot of the mountain, and declares his intention to destroy the Hebrews. He pledges to start over and give rise to a new people for Moses, a "great nation" to replace the one he is about to slaughter.

But Moses intercedes for the people, begging God to spare them. Interestingly, Moses does not ask God to extend mercy for the sake of the Hebrews. Instead, Moses asks that God spare the people for two reasons. The first reason is that if God destroys them, the Egyptians will conclude that God had acted treacherously toward the covenant people, leading them into the wilderness "with evil intent" to kill them there. The second reason is to keep a promise given to Abraham, Isaac and Israel (Jacob): to multiply their descendants and give them the promised land as a permanent inheritance.

And based on these arguments by Moses, God "relents" of his vow to wipe out the people he had led out of Egypt.

So Moses obeys God's command to get down the mountain and confront the participants in the wild party going on below. Carrying in his hands the stone tablets on which God has inscribed the laws, Moses hurries down the mountain, apparently collecting on the way his faithful lieutenant (and eventual successor) Joshua, who must have been waiting somewhere part way up. Joshua has heard the hubbub from the camp below, and concludes that the people are under attack. But Moses is under no such illusion, and identifies the sound as drunken singing.

As Moses marches into the midst of the wild celebration, his anger boils over. In one of the most iconic scenes in the Hebrew scriptures, Moses slams to the ground the two tablets of the law, smashing them to pieces. And then he seizes the idol and destroys it. The text says Moses burns the idol (suggesting that it may have been a wooden frame covered with gold). He then grinds it to a powder and mixes it with water, commanding the guilty revelers to drink the dirty mixture.

Having removed the offending idol from the midst of the people, Moses turns to confront Aaron. He demands an explanation, implying that Aaron must have harbored a great deal of resentment against the people to be willing to lead them into such a horrific sin. But Aaron tries to dodge responsibility for this abomination. He blames the people for the decision, describing them as "prone to evil." And what's more, Aaron even fails to take responsibility for crafting the idol, making the somewhat childish claim that he just threw a bunch of jewelry into the fire, "and out came this calf."

Obviously not mollified by Aaron's lame account of the events, Moses prepares to carry the punishment of the people a step further. Noting that the people's orgiastic behavior has made them "a laughingstock," Moses calls for those who are still committed to honoring God to come to his side. The text says that "the Levites rallied to him." Moses commands the Levites to strap on swords and execute those participating in the shameful revelry, even if it turns out to be those closest to them. The Levites obey this command, thus earning for themselves a special consecration and blessing.

(Some scholars suggest that this description indicates that there were once two groups of priests among the Israelites, those descended from Aaron and those who were from the Levites. This text, they say, was meant in part to demonstrate that the Aaronites somehow shared the guilt of Aaron's grievous sin while the Levites faithfully obeyed the command to punish the wrongdoers.)         

In the aftermath of the bloodshed, Moses once again approaches God, asking forgiveness for the severely punished people and offering his own life to prevent further destruction. But God brushes aside Moses' offer, declaring that the people must be punished for their own sins. And then God sends a terrible plague to sweep through the Hebrews' camp.

Finally, God commands the people to resume their march toward the promised land. He says he will send an angel to go before them, but will no longer travel with them personally - his anger remains so great that it represents a threat to the people on their journey. And the people, stricken with grief over the threat of God's self-removal from the journey, strip off their jewelry. They are apparently ashamed of the sinful use they had made of the precious metals God had arranged for them to "plunder" from their Egyptian neighbors. We leave this passage with an image in our minds of a depressed and chastened people, trudging across the trackless wilderness with an intense consciousness of the sins they had committed before God.

Questions to leave with: How do you understand God's punishment of the people? God decided not to destroy them, but unleashed a great plague. Maybe we are also to understand that God unleashed the slaughter inflicted by Moses and the Levites. God also withdraws his presence from among the people on their journey. Does this seem like vacillation on God's part? And which of these punishments (the sword, plague, God's absence) seems like the most serious and painful? Why do you think that?

Every Blessing,