Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 32:7-8

7 And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:

8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

From God’s summary of the goings-on down below we can see that His view is perfectly clear, for He gives explicit detail on how the people had corrupted themselves, even reciting the specific words that Aaron said when presenting the golden calf.

I see this conversation as being representative of God’s observance of humanity throughout all time. How many times have there been similar conversations in the halls of heaven as God and His court consider the ways that mankind has gone astray down below? In the time of Noah? Before the coming of Christ? Still yet-to-come before the second coming? It is quite a privilege to us that Moses was elevated to take part in this instance so that we could receive an account of it.

The role that Moses served in this moment is symbolic of the Son of God, communing with the Father above and then being sent down to resolve the sins of the people. The nature of the Israelites, and indeed of all the world, is to go astray. We receive blessings and freedom, we appreciate it for a time, but then we give in to sin and try to find our own way to the promised land. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way,” (Isaiah 53:6).

For a time, God permits us to run riot, but eventually there must come a time of divine intervention and reckoning. As in the time of Noah, God was just about ready to reset the entire enterprise, as we will see in tomorrow’s verses.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 32:5-6

5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the Lord.

6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

The idolatry of the Israelites bore yet another similarity to God’s tabernacle in that both required animal sacrifice. We have already discussed the symbolism of the offerings to be made to the Lord in the tabernacle and how they represented the people giving up their sins, devoting their passions to the Almighty, and submitting their lives to His purpose.

Assuming that the animal offerings to this golden idol carried the same symbolism, then they were giving their passions, their energies, and their very lives to something evil. Anyone that has dabbled in a life of sin knows that you cannot just have it on the side, totally separate from the rest of your life. Many have tried, but to maintain the course of sin we must progressively lay on its altar the very best of ourselves, including the love and energy that we had intended to withhold from it.

It is interesting that the Israelites would be so forward in admitting that this was the aim of their idolatry. I think most of us are caught unawares by the cost of sin, having only entered into vice because we assumed it wouldn’t take so much from us. Not for the first time, it appears to me that the Old Testament takes all that is subtle, invisible, and spiritual today, and makes them immediate, real, and physical.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 32:2-4

2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.

4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

It does seem a strange thing that Aaron complied with the wishes of the Israelites and would fashion them a golden idol. Based on all the other accounts of him, it seems he was generally obedient to the Lord, so why would he consent to this? And why would the Lord trust him hereafter to serve as a priest after making this infraction?

Perhaps this was a point of failure for him, but one that didn’t destroy his soul. Perhaps he saw himself as a representative of the people, his duty being to execute their will whether for good or ill, regardless of his personal feelings. It does occur to me that Aaron might also have only complied with the people out of spite. Perhaps he saw the people’s insistence on damning themselves, and in his anger was happy to see them do it. Some of the later verses in this chapter might support this theory.

In any case, performing this idolatry was going to require the people to give up their most precious possessions. Their gold, their jewelry, and their heirlooms were all stripped from their families and given up to fashion the pagan idol.

Let us compare and contrast this to the first instruction God gave to Moses for the Israelites in building the tabernacle. Right at the start God told Moses that the Israelites would need to offer their riches if they were to build the holy place. But in those verses, God made it explicitly clear that this was to be a willful offering. They could choose to participate, or they could choose not to. No such freewill election is expressed here with the golden calf. Unlike God, the idol wouldn’t even exist without their gold, so if they insisted upon having it, sacrifice was mandatory.

Either path of worship, whether to the true God or to a false theology will require a cost of that which is most precious. The difference is that God only invites us to make that offering, whereas the false religion demands it of us! If we follow God, we will be taken only so far as we willingly submit to. If we follow evil, we will be taken for everything, whether we choose it or not.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 32:1

1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

I mentioned at the end of the last chapter that I see this account of Moses receiving the law and the Israelites degenerating into idolatry as a useful analogy for all mankind. Moses was naturally oriented towards God, and he was learning the rituals and process that would draw every soul nearer to the Lord. Meanwhile, the Israelites were obviously oriented towards the perverse and the carnal. Without Moses there to keep them in line, they naturally deviated towards adulteration of the spiritual.

Moses’s path was one of intentional progression and continual realignment with ultimate good. The Israelite’s path was one of mindless entropy, being absorbed back into the sea of complacency.

The two examples present a choice to us. One is a life of fixed attention upward to the divine, with continual effort and sacrifice to both move forward and remain in proper alignment, and the other is to let the eyes stray downward, relax into our basest instincts, and indulge our appetites.