33 And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book.

34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them.

35 And the Lord plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

The Lord assured Moses that those who had betrayed Him would be blotted out of His book, and there seems to be implied with that, “…but not those that didn’t.” Thus, Moses’s offer to receive the same punishment as all the rest of the people was declined. Presumably, being “blotted out” would mean, at the very least, to be cut off from being one of the Lord’s chosen people, and potentially to be mortally destroyed.

Those that had demanded the calf had specifically chosen to not have the Lord for their God anymore, even after they had seen Him save them with mighty miracles. They had already blotted themselves in their hearts, so the Lord was simply synchronizing His records with their decision. Those that want to live a godless life shall receive their wish. If they insist that the Almighty is not a part of our lives, they will find that indeed He is not, for they will have created a bubble around them where He does not exist.

This sense of getting the consequences that one wishes for is perhaps most clear in the last verse of the chapter. Israel wanted to worship idols like the Egyptians, so now they received a plague just like the Egyptians had. They had witnessed this exact pattern firsthand. They had been kept safe, while they saw exactly what ramifications came upon those who came out in opposition to the Lord. And yet, in spite of all this firsthand knowledge, they followed the Egyptians’ pattern all the way to the exact same conclusion. The plague could not have been more predictable.