Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 23rd June 2024), session sixteen in our series journeying through the book of Exodus.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘And the people bowed and prayed | To the neon god they made’
–Simon & Garfunkel, The Sounds of Silence
‘In the absence of security | I made my way into the night’
–George Michael, Fastlove
Welcome to the messiest scene in the whole of the Exodus story!
After all the vivid scenes and sounds of Sinai, the brilliant sapphire sea at God’s feet, and the intricate beauty in the plans for God’s dwelling place, this scene is like that point in the film when the soundtrack switches to an ominous key.
READ: EXODUS 32 (NET)[i]
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
‘I just threw the gold jewellery in the fire, and out jumped this calf’ (Ex. 32:24)
Some excuses are more believable than others.
Although, with all the strange and wonderful things the Israelites have witnessed in the past few weeks—things that would rightly make anyone question their understanding of the world—maybe Aaron’s hoping Moses doesn’t think this sounds too fantastic.
Still, Aaron would not be the first person to make a bad excuse. At some point in our lives, I’m guessing most of us have done so, like, the ‘dog ate my homework’ (when we don’t own a dog), or ‘there was a power cut and my alarm didn’t go off’ (when we pressed ‘snooze’ on the alarm).
According to Reader’s Digest, here are some genuine excuses people gave for not showing up to work.[ii] I’ll let you decide if they’re believable or not:
‘I couldn’t come to work because I accidentally got on a plane.’
‘I was experiencing traumatic stress from a large spider found in our home, and had to stay home to deal with it.’
‘My mother-in-law wouldn’t stop talking.’
‘My mother made my favourite dish and I ate too much.’
And my favourite…
‘I woke up in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it.’
Despite how bad those excuses are, they don’t match up to Aaron’s.
We know the story. We’ve read what has happened: Aaron has taken the gold jewellery (the treasure that the Egyptians had gifted the Israelites with when they left Egypt, gifts God had given in Ex. 12:25-26), melted this treasure down and then, like how the Ark of the Covenant was to be formed, shaped and fashioned that gold over a wooden framework.
This is no accident. It’s all intention. We know Aaron is trying to worm out of any blame.[iii]
As terrible as the excuse is, though, maybe there’s still some truth to it. Maybe Aaron says more than he realises, and unknowingly admits to a tendency that affects us all: That when times get difficult, things become uncertain, and life gets hot, there’s a tendency to throw our God-given value into those fires, at which point, idols jump out.
To put it another way, in moments of despair and distress, we seek consolation in what we can see and touch.
The people of Israel find themselves in tough place. As this passage starts, they haven’t seen Moses for forty days. From their point of view, he disappeared up a mountain, without food and water, and by all likelihood, he’s either done a runner or he’s dead. They don’t think he’s coming back.
So, they panic. Here they are, in the wilderness of Sinai, feeling stranded. Not just geographically, but also spiritually. Because of Moses’ absence, they think that God has ghosted them, too, and so begin to seek something, even creating something, to lead them.
Sure, they have seen some amazing things, experiencing God, in some sense. They have witnessed God’s battle with the gods of Egypt; they have walked through the walls of the sea; they have eaten the miraculous provision of manna and quail, and drank water from a rock. They have heard the voice of God, as Tom King explored with us a few weeks ago in Exodus 19 and 20. As we saw, when Rachel took us through Exodus 24, seventy of their leaders have also eaten at the feet of God. But, in the main, Moses has been their living link with YHWH.
And he’s gone.
I’ve mentioned this before, but we can’t forget where these people have come from. The God they’ve encountered on their exodus journey has not been akin to anything they have encountered before.[iv]
In Egypt, gods have carvings and engravings—things you can see and touch and approach. But this God, the real God, is not constrained or captured by such things. A statue could never contain the greatness of the Almighty, and God refuses to be defined and limited by such things. God is on the loose. A wild God. A God who is invisible, uncontrollable, undesignable.
They’re struggling with this “new” idea and experience of God. They are not used to a god you can’t see, touch, or control. This God doesn’t meet their heritage of expectations about how gods go about their business. And because of their stiff-necked ideas about gods, they wrongly interpret Moses’ absence as the absence of God.
Moses not being there does not mean that they are separated from God, at all. We know this. But they struggle to imagine a God who can be present when some mediator, some transmitter is not.[v]
So, inevitably, the people, acting on what they have known, go back to what they have known.
We could spend time talking about the significance of a bull, of how it relates to the bovine gods of Egypt and the cattle-shaped gods of the other cultures that existed at the time. But, regardless of knowing any of that, the bottom line is that the people want something they can touch and see.
It could be that they make a god for themselves, departing from worshipping YHWH. It could also be that they’re attempting to craft YHWH in their own imagining of YHWH, and so make a false image of God. But, one way or another, they break the first three commandments and, as the psalmist would later word it, ‘They traded their glorious God for a statue of a grass-eating ox!’ (Ps. 106:20)
As Eugene Peterson translates, ‘They traded the Glory for a cheap piece of sculpture—a grass-chewing bull!’ (Ps. 106:20, MSG).
THE PARODY OF IDOLS
I’m not making excuses for the people in this scene, but I get it. I can relate to this. I’ve been there. Maybe you have, too?
There are times when God feels absent and unreachable, times when I have felt abandoned. Of course, we “know” God hasn’t ran off. But that’s easy to say when you’re not experiencing it. It’s another thing in the midst of it, when the wildernesses, barren seasons and dark nights of the soul are pressing in. In that felt abandonment, it’s tempting to chase something new or construct a ‘god’ out of the things around me. It’s easy to run back to what I’ve left.
As someone else said it, ‘When times get hard and God seems nowhere to be found, the consolations of what we can see and touch, taste and smell are awfully appealing.’[vi]
It’s also tempting, when adrift from all our certainties, to wrongly think about God and so fashion God into what God isn’t. Long before the Israelites call for a physical idol, they already hold tightly to the false idea, the false idol, that God has deserted them, even when the manna is still falling and the water is still flowing. The truth is, conceptual idols take shape before physical idols are formed.
And then, there are times when I just rebel and run after things that appear more glamourous, glitzy, and enjoyable than God. Things that will instantly gratify and take me to the places I want to go and not where God wants me to go.
When the fires of life come, in choosing to place value in other things, my idols jump out.
In his book, Three Mile an Hour God, Japanese author, Kosuke Koyama, makes the point that ‘Man makes idols because he is lonely.’[vii]
Commenting on this scene in Exodus 32, Koyama notes that the people feel lost and precarious, alerted to a genuine need by this sense of loneliness. Loneliness, Koyama states, can birth a moment of great spiritual creativity, a moment in which we become more alert to the greatness of God’s presence. But, in their haste for a quick fix, instead of grasping the invisible presence of God more, instead of learning to trust and so deepen their knowledge of God, they manifest their own limited understanding and so deepen the crisis. Instead of bringing that sense of God nearer, we bury our heads deeper into our sense of isolation.
I’m speaking to myself here. But when that sense of abandonment comes, the ‘hard way forward reckons with a divine presence that continues to elude our senses even as it fills and animates them. The hard way forward knows the pain of absence and doubt, but still chooses to follow.’[viii]
Even in our felt loneliness, God is with us. That’s true of us. It was true of the Israelites, too. God was still with them.
The crazy thing is, God recognises their insecurity and has been planning to meet it. For the past seven chapters, as Helen shared last week, God’s been drawing up blueprints for his dwelling with the people. God knew their need better than they did and has been taking steps to meet that need before the people recognised they even had any need. All they had to do was wait, to trust, and lay aside their timetable.
In many ways, like all idols, the Golden Calf is a cheap knock-off, a parody of what God was preparing for them in the Tabernacle. This parody wounds, rather than meeting the need, like drinking salt water when thirsty.
When God talks to Moses about the Tabernacle, in Exodus 25:1-2, God says the materials used to construct the tent and all its furnishing are to be given freely. ‘Anyone who wants to can give’. There’s no demand, there’s no force, there’s no set quantity. They’re free to choose to do so. And that’s because, as the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said it, ‘the free God desires the free worship of free human beings.’[ix]
When Aaron crafts this bull, however, he commands the men of Israel to ‘take’ the gold earrings from their wives, daughters and sons. The Hebrew is a violent word, it means ‘tear off’—theres’ pain and damage involved. No consent, just coercion and violence.
Even in its conception, the idol is an exact opposite of the gracious, co-suffering, liberating and generous God they have experienced in the Exodus. The Calf is a tyrant. It’s more like Egypt, where worship and service were forced. It’s an anti-Tabernacle, an anti-Ark.[x]
They have this whole thing coming, this elaborately designed tabernacle, this priesthood, this beautiful thing that God was going to provide where God’s glory would actually dwell. But instead, they build a lifeless statue, forged from violent acts.
As Moses demonstrates, when he melts this bull down, this is no ‘god’. You can break it, cook it, consume it, and it’ll come out in the toilet afterwards.
THE HUMAN IDOL
‘If only Moses had been around’, we may wonder, ‘things would have been different then.’
Except, that’s not quiet the case.
Moses’ absence exposes something important: before the calf existed, he was their idol.
The opening verse betrays the thoughts of the people: ‘“Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”’ (Ex. 32:1, NIV, Italics mine)
To state the obvious, it wasn’t Moses who brought them up out of Egypt. It was YHWH, it was God. And even if Moses doesn’t return, God’s power, provision and presence wouldn’t be any less among them. But Moses has become an idol to them; in some sense, he embodies divinity in their eyes.
Many years after this scene, Jesus still finds himself correcting some people about this confusion. When talking about himself being the Bread of Life, Jesus states, to a mob adamant that Moses fed their ancestors, ‘I assure you, Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers you the true bread from heaven.’ (Jn. 6:32, NLT)
So as controversial as this may sound, Moses’ absence is a necessary thing. It sets up a test for the people, a test that will help them see Moses is not God.
A test they ultimately fail.
It is also sets up a test for Moses, too.
Because, while Moses is on the Mountain top, getting God’s blueprints, God stops the conversation. God sees what is happening at the foot of the mountain in the camp of the Israelites (please, please remember this). God’s aware of everything and makes Moses aware of what is taking place. And in the process, God turns to Moses and says: ‘“Go down, because yourpeople, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.”’ (Ex. 32:7, NIV, italics mine)
What’s going on? Is God doing that thing parents do sometimes, when a child messes up and one parent says to another, ‘your son has just done so and so’? No.
For starters, Moses is not the parent, or even a parent of these people. They are God’s people. As early as Exodus 4, God has identified as the sole parent of this nation (Ex. 4:22). God made them, God redeemed them, God brought them out of Egypt, and God will not share that glory with anyone else (as the first commandment states, Ex. 20:2-3).
Rather, God’s words have a satirical, saracstic tone to them: God knows, as much as Moses does, and we do, that Moses did not bring the people out of Egypt. But this satire brings to Moses, and us, a dreadful revelation: in the people’s eyes, he has become an idol, symbolizing nothing other than his own self.
This forms the basis for Moses’ test. Because after this, God gives Moses a proposition: God suggests that he should just scrap it all; take the pages of the story so far, rip them out of the book of history, scrunch them up and chuck them in the bin.[xi] God tells Moses that he is going to eradicate all of these stubborn, stiff-necked people and start a new nation from Moses.
It’s a big offer. And the looming question is, ‘what will Moses do?’
Will Moses consent, get out of God’s way and let God’s anger blaze (Ex. 32:10)? Or will he say, ‘no’. But, in saying ‘no’ to this plan, would that change anything?
Admittedly, this is a complex scene—lots of ink has spilled about this conversation between Moses and God. And, to be clear, in what I am about to say, I am not suggesting in any way that God is not angry about the sin of the people (I’ll come back to God’s anger), and neither am I questioning the genuine intercession of Moses.
Also, I am not even going to get into the debate about whether God’s mind can actually be changed. Sorry to disappoint you 😦
But, what if there is more happening here, something deeper?
What if this is a test of Moses’ heart for the people? What if God knows Moses’ heart better than Moses? What if God is wanting to expose, for Moses’ sake, that Moses has a sense of who God is and who God isn’t, getting Moses to wrestle with God’s character? And what if God, in having this conversation with Moses, is not really attempting to pacify his own divine anger, but rather, knowing Moses’ character, is attempting to pacify Moses’ anger.
I’ll explain as we go through, so please listen closely …
Let’s put it this way: Are we really willing to except that God would turn his back on the people he has rescued; that the God who wanted to show his greatness to the nations, through this nation, would just wipe them out; and that this God would break his promises?
If you are willing to believe that, then please know that Moses isn’t willing to except that (at least in theory).
Moses gets right in God’s face, he pleads with God in this powerful prayer of intercession. Moses is fearless as he shoves what he has learnt about God back in God’s face.
‘Why are you so angry’, Moses says. The Hebrew idiom means, ‘why are your nostrils burning.’ Moses is challenging God’s reasoning and basis for being upset. ‘Don’t let you anger burn’, is what Moses is literally saying (remember this!)
Then Moses makes three appeals that go right to God’s own heart—three brilliant and correct answers to the test.
Firstly, although Moses may be seen as an idol by the people, Moses does not see himself that way. Moses is clear on who he is and who God is. The people may think they need Moses and God to co-parent; God may even (apparently) offer Moses such a parental partnership, but Moses wants nothing to do with it. He throws God’s words back at Him, ‘these are your people, who you brought up out of Egypt.’ (Ex. 32:11). Moses is appealing not only to God’s ownership of these people, but also God’s history. ‘These people are a product of your mighty acts, and it’s your responsibility, not mine, to lead and guide them’, he is saying.
Secondly, Moses tells God to remember his own character (Ex. 32:12). ‘Destroying these people is not the kind of God I know you to be, and neither is it the kind of God Egypt knew you to be. You are the God of the Hebrews,’ Moses appears to be saying, ‘the God who is famous for rescue. Killing these people won’t make you famous, but infamous. If you can’t even lead your own people, O Lord, you will look worse than Pharaoh.’
Great answer!
Thirdly, Moses reminds God of his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God promised to make a nation out of their descendants—a numerous nation that will be a blessing to all nations.
I’ve read a number of people suggest that if God started a nation afresh with Moses, he would still be keeping his promise because Moses is one of Abraham’s, Isaac’s and Jacob’s descendants.
Moses would not agree.
Back in Genesis 46:4, God promised he would go down into Egypt with Jacob and that he would bring Jacob back out of Egypt. In the same breath, God told Jacob he would die in Egypt. It’s not a contradiction. God speaks to the person, Jacob, and the nation he will father (Israel). God is promising to bring Jacob’s family (Israel) out of Egypt.
Moses grasps this, knowing he is not Israel; he’s a mere fragment of it. ‘If you wipe them out,’ Moses says, ‘you break your promise, and I know you are not a promise-breaking God.’
God’s History.
God’s name.
God’s Covenant Promises.
Moses slams all three into God. Moses knows what God is like, and what God is not like. And regardless of how we understand the mechanics of all this, it works. God hears Moses and acts accordingly.
FLARED NOSTRILS
As verse 14, tells us,
‘the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.’
Again, I’m not exploring the idea if God’s mind can be changed. But it’s important to see this verse. Please don’t forget it. It’s important in what happens next.
Moses, in prayer, has rightly presented what God is like to God, showing he understands God’s character. So you would also think that Moses, who has explained God’s heart perfectly, would also be able and willing to express it.
To put it another way, will Moses now put forward the mercy that God has chosen to show?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but you can pray some really great prayers about people that get right to the heart of God. In the presence of God, I can pray well (I feel) for people, even people I don’t like, people I struggle with. But when the rubber hits the road, and I actually encounter people, things can go horribly wrong.
It’s like the difference between a driving theory test and the practical test. I passed my theory test with flying colours, just like Moses passes his theory test—he knows the heart of God. In the classroom, we’re both great. Nevertheless, it took me five attempts to pass my practical!
As for Moses’ driving, well let’s just say he makes more than a few minor faults.
Moses is great on the top of the Mountain, we all are. He recognises anger and he deals with it. But then Moses starts to descend. Verse 15 speaks of Moses ‘turning’ and ‘going down’. There’s more here than mere physical movement. He turns from the presence of God, and descends to the valley. And even though God has already told Moses what is happening, and even though God has just relented from his own anger (God will not act on what God has seen), when Moses sees for himself what is going, all his theory goes out of the window.
Moses’ anger flares up, so we are told in verse 19. Moses’ nostrils grow hot, they burn and, in his anger, he loses control. He throws the stone tablets to the ground, smashing God’s covenant with the people, and then proceeds to destroy the gold calf and feed it to the people.
Maybe, those dramatic actions make sense. But, they fail to pacify Moses’ flaring anger. Aaron, in verse 22, even hits Moses with the same words Moses hit God with, ‘Don’t let your anger burn’. But unlike God, who hears Moses, Moses ignores Aaron, unresponsive to his intercession. Moses refuses to hear, he just sees, fuelling his anger more.
The result of which, is that Moses instigates a slaughter, resulting in the death of 3000 people.
I read someone who said that, in light of the millions of Israelites, 3000 is not a huge percentage. I couldn’t care about the size of the percentage—3000 people is a lot of people!
Time doesn’t allow, but this slaughter raises lots of questions. Like, what were these Levites doing before all of this? Where they not involved? Doesn’t the earlier section of the story imply everyone as being involved?
And does it not seem odd that ‘team Moses’, in this scene, happens to be the same tribe as Moses? Think about it, there’s a systematic killing in every other tribe of Israel, bar Levi. They can’t have all been innocent. Actually, Aaron’s a Levite, and we know he was involved—why does he get a free pass? Surely Moses doesn’t fall for Aaron’s sloppy attempt at an excuse, does he?
Also, as an aside, and as a contrast, when Acts 2 talks about the effects of Peter’s preaching at Pentecost, as Peter talks about the merciful provision of God put forth in Christ Jesus, the writer of Acts tells us 3000 people were added to the people of God (Acts 2: 41). Is there a connection here? There is, and I’ll let you explore.[xii]
But, back to the story at hand, it’s a horrible scene, a total disaster. We can be honest about that.
Even though Moses, in verse 27, claims, ‘This is what the Lord says …’, we know, because we’ve just read the story, that this is not what the Lord has said.[xiii] God’s decision was already made, and God made that choice knowing everything that Moses now sees first hand—there has been no new data that Moses has that God has no access to. Moses can calm God, apparently, but not his own self. Moses does what he desperately implored God not to do, what Moses said would be against God’s own character and glory.
We often focus on the gross error of Aaron and the people in this story (and it is a gross error). But, Moses has just made the same mistake as Aaron and the people. Moses, too, in a way, has encountered a fiery situation and out jumps an idol, a false image of the glory of God.
Maybe we don’t see it. Maybe we don’t want to see it. But could this be because we, like the people, also have our own idolatry of Moses.
GOD’S RESPONSE
Moses gets it wrong.
The question is not whether God is angry by the Golden Calf—of course there is a pain in the heart of God over this act. God has every right to be upset. God doesn’t treat sin lightly. Ultimately, Christ suffers to break the power of sin on our lives.
The question is, what does God do in his anger and what does Moses do in his own anger?
One of the best treatments I have read on God’s anger is by Abraham J. Heschel, in his book, The Prophets.
He notes that in our modern understanding, ‘The word “anger” is charged with connotations of spite, recklessness, and iniquity.’ We think of anger as a possessive, overtaking, emotional reaction, because we often allow our anger to control us. But as Heschel points out, God’s anger does not control God. God controls it.
Even in this story, God doesn’t react in an unrestrained way, like Moses does. God engages in a conversation about how he feels. God pauses and examines his anger, ‘making his divine will “vulnerable” to human challenge’.[xiv] God hears Moses.
God’s anger is not reckless, or spiteful.
This doesn’t mean God’s anger is a false feeling—like God’s faking it. No. As Heschel states, ‘The [anger] of God is lamentation.’ In all the voices of the prophets, God’s anger is expressed because God is not indifferent to evil. God is concerned. God is affected, in his love for us, by what humanity does to each other. In the Hebrew prophets, God’s anger is never treated as an emotional outburst, an irrational fit, or a tantrum, but rather as a part of His continual care and sympathy. Unlike the humanity the prophets challenged, God’s heart is not a heart of stone.
Personally, I hope God is angry at what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, etc. Not to mention poverty, modern slavery, rape and child molestation. If God is unmoved, then I am wasting my time to pray, because my prayers are anchored on God having a heart of flesh, so to speak.
God gets angry (his nostrils get hot), but this is not the same thing as saying that God is an angry god. The prophets never speak of God like that. Rather, God has large nostrils: God is slow to anger, as God will reveal to Moses later on Exodus 34:6.
In the ancient world, the gods were often seen as spiteful, malicious. Anger was there natural disposition. But not this God. His anger passes, it’s short. As Heschel notes, ‘Again and again we are told that God’s love or kindness goes on forever (Jer. 31:3; 33:11; Ps. 100:5; 106:1; 107:1; 118:1-4; 136:1-26; Ezra: 3:11); we are never told that His anger goes on forever.’ ‘Anger is always described as a moment, for God, something that happens rather than something that abides’ (Is. 26:20; 54:7-8; 57:16-19; Ps. 30:5; 103:8-14).
Moreover, in the Hebrew texts, anger is not even an emotion God delights in unleashing, but deplores (Lam. 3:33; Jer. 44:7-8). There’s a sense that God finds it distastful. Rather, God delights in kindness, justice, righteousness … in doing good (Jer. 9:24; 32:41).
But God’s anger, God’s pain, as Heschel also points out, is a reminder that ‘man is in need of forgiveness’. A reminder that the world is dark and in need of light. A summons to us, to become aware of the agony and the fault lines that crack through every human heart.
God expresses his anger because God wants humanities’ heart to be moved like His.
Heschel continues, stating, that God’s response to His anger is to repair and restore. God pursues, God pleads, and goes to all lengths to restore people.[xv] As the Methodist minister William F. Lofthouse [1871-1965] declared, ‘[God] will and can never rest until the defaulter is brought, not to punishment (which is a minor matter), but to a re-entrance into the old personal relations.’[xvi]
And this is what we see in this story of the Golden Calf, in this disastrous interruption to God’s plans of dwelling. This story does not end with the last verse of chapter 32, it continues into chapters 33 and 34, as Moses, once again, seeks the forgiveness of God.
Without stepping on the toes of what will come next week, the conclusion to this horrible episode is not that God destroys Israel, ‘but that God forgives their sin and renews his covenant.’[xvii] And, as part of this, God reveals himself once more to Moses as a God primarily characterised by grace and mercy (Ex. 34:5-7).
What God does in his anger, is not what Moses does in his.
TAKE, EAT, REMEMBER
Moses fails. We see this reflected later on in Numbers 20. When God speaks in that scene of Moses’ lack of trust (Num. 20:12), God is not speaking about one sole instance that involved the rock. Moses has failed to display the otherness of God on a number of occasions.[xviii]
I’m not getting at Moses. But, as great as he is, Moses is still human like you and me, and his failing is not his alone. Humanity, made to be God’s image, has failed to display God’s otherness. I fail in that.
In the story of history, only one man has ever succeeded: Jesus, God incarnate. God became one of us, doing what we could not do. As John writes it in his gospel, ‘The Word became human and lived on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness (grace and truth). And we have seen his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father.’ (Jn. 1:14, NLT).
Even on the cross, we see this glory, faithfulness and unfailing love. As Jesus suffers, as he is wounded, insulted and executed, we witness the idolatry of humanity. But, we also witness the light of God, absorbing our sin, pleading with us, issuing forgiveness in return for every blow. We crucify God, but God, in the midst of our idolatry, acts to bring about the way for relationship to be reconciled.
Unlike Moses’ response, God’s anger leads to the giving of His self.
And unlike Moses, Jesus, the Son of God, gives us a far better meal to eat.
God doesn’t grind down our mistakes, our sin, and feed it back to us. No. Rather, in the place of our sin, God offers Himself—symbolised in the bread and wine—to remember, not our great failings, but His great grace, mercy and forgiveness.
In those times when you or I struggle to sense and know that forgiveness, those times when our guilt feels heavy and God appears absent and unreachable, we can come, take, eat and drink these physical emblems as a means of knowing that God has not abandoned us.
‘Lord, I have heard of your fame | I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord | Repeat them in our day |in our time make them known | in wrath remember mercy.’ — Habakkuk 3:2 (NIV)
‘And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “[Take it and eat it.]This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”’ — Jesus, Luke 22:19 (NIV) [Brackets from Matthew 26:27 (NIV]
‘If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day. Don’t give the Devil a chance.’ –Paul, Ephesians 4:26-27 (GNT)
ENDNOTES:
[i] The story of the ‘Golden Calf‘ is a moment that burns itself onto the consciousness of the people of Israel. For sure, the Exodus story as a whole is consistently reflected upon throughout the unfolding story of the Old Testament. But from out of the this story, the episode of the Calf receives particular focus in a number of other places: Deut. 9; Neh. 9; Ps. 106; Ezek. 20; Acts 7; 1 Cor. 10, to name a few. It’s worth reading these passages, also, and observing what is highlighted, what is not highlighted, and noting the purpose of the writer’s use of this scene.
[ii] Reader’s Digest: https://www.rd.com/list/excuses-for-calling-out-of-work/
[iii] It’s worth noting, too, that as much as Aaron had his part to play in this idol, the text also portrays Aaron being under some pressure. In the opening verse, when the people go to Aaron, the Hebrew expression for ‘gathering around’ him carries a threatening tone. This was no polite request, but a mob demand. Also, it is the people who declare the calf to be ‘the gods who bought you out of Egypt’, to which Aaron immediately responds by building an altar and declaring a feast day to YHWH, maybe as a way of tempering the inclination to worship other gods. None of this gets Aaron off the hook with his complicity in this act, but it does help furnish us with a fuller picture of his motives. [see, H. Junia Pokrifka, Exodus: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Beacon Hill Press, Kansa City, MO, 2018), p. 382; . James D. Newsome Jr, Exodus, Interpretation Bible Studies (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 1998) , p. 99; Ralph K. Hawkins, Discovering Exodus (SPCK, London, 2021), p. 147]
[iv] Yes, they would have known the stories of their ancestors, the stories we read in Genesis. But, let us not forget that even in Genesis, and Exodus and the ongoing story of the scriptures, that the Israelites still held notions of the other gods of their culture. To many of them, YHWH was one among many. Even though God was calling them to be loyal to Him only, Israel struggled with this. And the fact that God has to make this call to fidelity at all, should tell us something about the conceptions of the people God is working with.
[v] As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik notes, in his book, Vision and Leadership, ‘They felt that they themselves did not have access to the Almighty. Only somebody of great charisma and ability could have access to him. The people sinned because they were perplexed. … They did not understand that, while Moses was the greatest of all prophets and the greatest of all men, every Jew has access to God… Sometimes it is a sense of one’s greatness that causes sin; sometimes it is a sense of one’s smallness.’ (As quoted by Josh Gerstein, Revisiting the Sin of the Golden Calf)
[vi] H. Stephen Shoemaker, GodStories: New Narratives from Sacred Texts (Valley Forge, PA.: Judson Press, 1998), p.84
[vii] Kosuke Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God (SCM Press, 2021), p.126
[viii]Anathea Portier-Young, Commentary on Exodus 32:1-14
[ix] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, New Milford, CT, 2020), p. 197. In another place, Sacks rightly comments, ‘Faith, coerced, is not faith. Worship, forced, is not true worship’ (p. 153, 197)
[x] To use Robert Alter’s terms. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, Volume 1, The Five Books of Moses (W. W. Norton, London, 2019), p. 339
[xi] Btw, this is the context behind Moses’ later request to be blotted out of God’s record/book if God refuses to go with and before the people, as recorded in Exodus 32:32. I do not think Moses is referring to being scrubbed from the ‘Book of Life’. I’m not dismissing the idea of a ‘book of life’, although, I feel, it’s shape and contents has been speculated on beyond scriptural reference for it. I’m just suggesting that, in this context, in make more sense for Moses to be talking about the story of God’s redemptive acts, i.e. History, itself.
[xii] It’s telling that Pentecost is the festival that marks the giving of the law at Sinai. So it’s no accident that the number 3000 occurs in both accounts. Suffice it to say, that God, in his movements, seeks to add people to his family, rather than deleting them
[xiii] The Jewish Midrash also condemns Moses actions. The Midrash Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:14, states, ‘It is written (Ecclesiastes 7:9) “Do not be fast to anger [for anger resides in the bosom of fools].” Who was angry? Moses, as it is written: “Moses got angry and flung [the tablets] from his hands” (Exod. 32:19).’ It further adds God’s rebuke of Moses’ actions: ‘God said to him: “So, Moses, you are calming your anger by [destroying] the Tablets of the Covenant? Do you want me to calm my anger [by destroying things]? Do you not see that the world would not last even one hour [were I to do so]?” Moses said to [God]: “What should I do?” God said: “You need to pay a penalty. You shattered them, you replace them.” Thus: “Sculpt two stone tablets”’ (Deut. 10:1).’
Admittedly, the Midrash, being a conversational text of various interpretations, also presents interpretations praising Moses’ zeal. However, the biblical text is absent of any approval for Moses’ slaughter. Even Moses omits this slaughter when he recounts this event in Deuteronomy 9 (as do all the other texts that recount this story). Also, God’s own disapproval of Moses’ act is shown in Exodus 34:1. When God remarks, ‘the first tablets, which you broke’, there’s a sense it points to the irreverent and impulsive nature of Moses’ casting down of the covenant. Additionally, this is confirmed at the end of Exodus 32, in verse 33-34, when God meets with Moses again and God basically tells him he doesn’t need Moses to be the arm of the law. God reminds Moses that He (God) is capable of handling all disciplinary measures; the Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”. In other words, “Go do what I told you to do, Moses, and let me take care of punishment.” God doesn’t need or desire (and certainly never asks for) Moses’ violent response to the idolatry of Israel.
Finally, if God sent a plague as punishment at the end of this chapter, why condone a slaughter? [Disregarding discussion about if God directly sends a plague, or if the plague is a product of the people’s sin (i.e. that sin itself punished us, rather than God), or that the plague was a result of having to drink gold and ash]. It’s worth stating, that a plague needn’t mean death—there’s been plenty of plagues in this story that haven’t involved death, and the text doesn’t state any deaths as a consequence of this plague.
[xiv] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Story of God Bible Commentary: Exodus (Zondervan Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2021), p. 552
[xv] Thoughts taken from: Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets, The Meaning and Mystery of Wrath (HarperPerenial Modern Classics, New York, 2001), pp. 358-382.]
[xvi] W. F. Lofthouse, The Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, LI (19330), 29 ff. (As quoted by Heshel)
[xvii] Ralph K. Hawkins, Discovering Exodus (SPCK, London, 2021), p. 157
[xviii] Tellingly, in this later account of Numbers 20, despite his realisation and refusal to be an idol to the people in Exodus 32, Moses makes a huge ‘Freudian’ slip as he addresses the people, ‘Must we bring you water from this rock?’ (Num. 20:10), equating himself as being equal to God.
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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