Exodus 32.
WHEN days grew into weeks, while Moses was gone up into Mount Sinai, and they saw nothing of him, the people gathered together and went to Aaron, Moses’ brother, telling him to make them gods which should go before them, “for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him,” they said. Not a word about the living and true God!
Would the god that Aaron could make be able to take care of them as our God had? Could it have brought all those plagues on the Egyptians, and have opened the Red Sea for the people of Israel to go through dry footed? And had they forgotten so soon what they had promised to God through Moses in the eighth verse of the nineteenth chapter? Yes, indeed, they had, forgotten God too, and His love to them. The very first of the ten commandments (twentieth chapter, third verse) they had broken: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Aaron was no better than the rest, for he does not seem to have said anything to them about the wickedness of their wish; instead he tells them that they should break off the gold rings in the ears of their wives and children, and bring- them to him. This they did, and Aaron took the gold and melted it, and made a calf out of it. When the people saw the calf Aaron had made, they said,
“This is thy god Israel, who has brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!” This was worse, denying God altogether, and honoring Satan (for he was the person who had put the idea of the calf of gold into the minds of the people) as the one who had done all that God had done for them.
And still more, Aaron now made an altar before the calf for offerings to be made on it to the calf, and made a proclamation: “Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord!”—the calf Aaron had made was given God’s place entirely. They rose early the next day, and made offerings to the calf, sat down to eat and drink, and got up to have a good time.
Of all this, God had missed nothing. Every thought every word said, everything done by the people was known to Him. What should be done to such wicked people who had put themselves under the law?
“Let Me alone,” He said to Moses, “that My anger may burn against them, and I may consume them, and I will make of thee a great nation.”
What an opportunity for Moses this was, to be the head of a nation himself, but he refused it and pleaded with God to spare the people, —God’s people—they were His, whom He had brought out of Egypt; why, should the Egyptians be able to say that God had brought the people out to kill them all on the mountains? He reminded God of His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that the land He showed them should be their children’s forever. Then we read, “And the Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people.”
Yet with a sad heart, Moses turned and went down the mountain, carrying the two stone tablets in his hand on which the ten commandments were written.
Joshua seems not to have known what had happened while Moses and he had been away, for he said to his master, “There is a shout of war in the camp!” It was not war, but singing and dancing about the golden calf, and Moses as they drew near the camp, in hot anger threw down and broke the stone tablets. Then he took the image and burned it, ground the metal to powder and spread it on the water, and made the people drink it. How poorly Aaron excused himself for his share in all the wrong doing, in verses twenty-two, twenty-three and twenty-four! It was only partly true, what he said, but he must have been very much ashamed of himself.
Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and shouted, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come unto me.”
All the sons of Levi gathered to Moses. At his word they took swords, and went through the camp killing the people. About three thousand died. The next day Moses said to the people,
“You have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the Lord; perhaps I shall make an atonement for your sin.” So he went up the mountain to God to ask for forgiveness for them; he was willing even to have his own name blotted out of God’s book, if only the people might be spared. But the answer was,
“Whosoever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of My book,” and Moses was told to go back to the people, and lead them to the promised, land; God’s angel should go before them, but they were to be punished for their sin. The last verse tells us of a disease that God sent on the people because of the calf Aaron had made.
ML 09/17/1922