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Exo_32:7-35
But this prospect had no charms for Moses. It filled him with consternation and grief. His earnest and humble expostulation evinced that regard for the honor of God’s name, which seems to have been always the master feeling in his mind. Aware of the point of view in which the Egyptians and the neighboring nations regarded the recent conflict, as one testing the power of the God in whom Israel trusted, he urged—“Wherefore should the Egyptians say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth?” This was a thought the heart of Moses could not endure. But he rested not there; he pleaded the ancient promises to the patriarchs, especially as regarded the multitude of their race; for that increase must be long postponed, if he and his were substituted for the existing thousands in Israel.
His prayer prevailed; and, speaking after the manner of men, the Lord is said to have repented of the evil which he had thought to do unto his people.
Moses then went down. On the way he joined Joshua, who had been left below the clouded top of the mountain, and had remained waiting patiently for his master. Together they descended—Moses bearing in his hands the stone tablets on which the substance of the moral law, as embodied in the ten commandments, was written by the hand of God. As they proceeded, the air bore to their ears the distant sounds of the joyful shouts of the people in their jubilation before their golden idol.
Joshua, all whose instincts were martial, thought of nothing but a hostile assault upon the encampment. Like Job’s war-horse, he smelleth the battle afar off. “There is a noise of war,” said he “in the camp.” This is one of those small, delicate touches, which mark a historian drawing from fact—recording from nature. But Moses was not so deceived. He said, “It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome; but the voice of them that sing do I hear.”
And so it proved. Their continued descent brought them in full view of the camp; and there were the chosen people seen giving themselves up to bacchanalian revelries, and dancing around the idol they had formed. At that awful sight Moses, who, with all his gentleness and patience, could endure nothing that cast dishonor upon the Lord of Hosts, was moved with holy indignation, and casting from his hands the precious tablets that he bore, brake them to pieces beneath his feet. Nor was this act without signification. This people had but lately entered into high and solemn covenant with Jehovah—He to be their God and King, and they to be his people and subjects. The tables of stone contained, as it were, on the part of God, the terms of the agreement, and formed a pledge that He would on his part fulfill all that He had promised. That covenant they had, in a most essential matter, broken and cast to the winds; and by that act, all their expectations from him were destroyed and broken, as a matter of bonded and covenanted right. Moses, by casting the tables from him, and breaking them in their sight, adopted the most proper and significant mode of representing his view of the transaction.
Consider well the moral courage of Moses. He was but one man. Yet he ventured to confront that inebriate host, armed only with the terrors of holy wrath—and the conscience-stricken crowd shrunk before him; and not a hand was lifted up in resistance, when he strode straight up to their idol, cast it to the ground, and utterly consumed it before their eyes.
This destruction of the golden calf is particularly described, and demands a moment’s attention—“He took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and threw it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.” Many years after, in describing the transaction to a new generation, Moses says—“I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was small as dust, and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.” Much inquiry has been founded on this. A French writer Note: Goguet in his Origine des Lois. dwells on the difficulty of the operation, known to be such by all who work in metals. He argues from it the advancement in chymic art of the Egyptians, from whom he thinks Moses must have acquired the secret. “The heads of commentators,” he says, “have been much perplexed to know how Moses burnt and reduced the gold to powder. Many have offered vain and improbable conjectures; but an experienced chymist has removed every difficulty upon the subject, and has suggested this simple process—In the place of nitro-muriatic acid (the aqua regia of the alchymists) which we employ, the Hebrew legislator used natron, which is common in the East. What follows respecting his making the Israelites drink this powder, proves that he was perfectly acquainted with the whole effect of the operation. He wished to increase the punishment of their disobedience, and nothing could have been more suitable; for gold, reduced and made into a draught, in the manner I have mentioned, has a most disagreeable taste.”
This is very ingenious and interesting. It proceeds, however, upon the supposition, that the image was of solid gold, or at least wholly of gold. But if, as we have supposed, the nucleus was of wood, covered with plates of metal, we may then dispense with all this elaborate process, the application of which, under the circumstances, appears to us very difficult, and obtain another explanation, much more directly in unison with the sacred record. The fire would of course calcine the wood, and reduce that to powder; and from the residue, the plates of metal might easily be beaten or hammered out (as the “stamping” implies very thin, and from that form reduced to fine dust, which, with the ashes of the wood, might be easily cast upon the water. Or if the scientific appliances be at all necessary, they would be much more effectually and immediately operative in rendering friable the plates of metal than a solid or dense mass of gold. In regard to the drinking, the people were thus made to express the same contempt for it as the Egyptians would have done in eating any of their own animal gods; and it was, in this view, at the same time a punishment for their sin, and a humiliation to their idol. But it is not, after all, clear, that they were constrained to drink it as an intended punishment; but that it resulted as an inevitable incident from the fragments being cast into the stream descending from the mount, to which they had recourse for water.
It then devolved on Moses to execute judgment upon the chief offenders. When he stood in the gate, calling those who were on the Lord’s side to gather to him, the Levites came. At his command they took their swords, and passed through the camp, smiting all those, to the number of three thousand, whose appearance evinced the active part they had taken in these idolatrous orgies.
Then Moses returned to the mount—and let us heed well the words he uttered: “Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold: yet now, if thou will forgive their sin&mdash—: and if not, blot me out of the book which thou hast written.” What a glorious abruption is this! How beautiful! How grand! We know nothing like it in literature. Overpowered with emotion at the mere idea of the sin of Israel remaining unforgiven, he cannot finish the sentence; and after a pause of overwhelming feeling, he declares that in that case it were better for him to die than to live, and prays that it may be so. It was usual to keep a genealogical registry of living persons. When any one died his name was blotted out. God in this and similar expressions in Scripture, is supposed to keep such a book—the book of the living—and to be blotted from it, was to die.