Exodus32chapter 32

Exodus 32:1

Forty days earlier the people had answered at 24:3 and 24:7 that all the LORD had spoken they would do, and 24:18 says Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights. What they ask for is something to go before them, which is what the pillar had done since 13:21. They also hand the deliverance to Moses, calling him the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, and verse 7 puts that same phrase back in God's mouth.

Exodus 32:2-3

Aaron asks for the gold hanging on the wives, the sons and the daughters, and the people bring it without an argument. The same free giving of gold is recorded at 35:22, where earrings and rings are brought for the tabernacle, so the material is identical and the use is the difference. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the detail about the sons' earrings as pointing to the mixed multitude of 12:38, since Egyptian young men did not wear them.

Exodus 32:4

The word molten occurs here for the first time in Scripture. They credit the exodus to a thing made that week, saying these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and Jeroboam uses almost the same sentence over two calves at 1 Kings 12:28. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown identify the figure with the Egyptian bull Apis of Memphis, while other readers have named Hathor or taken the calf as a pedestal for an unseen god, and Exodus itself names none of them.

Exodus 32:5-6

Aaron does not rename the God of Israel. He builds an altar and proclaims a feast to the LORD, so the name is kept and the form is changed, which is what the second commandment at 20:4 had addressed twelve chapters earlier. Paul quotes verse 6 word for word at 1 Corinthians 10:7 and applies it to a church, and 1 Corinthians 10:11 says these things were written for our admonition.

Exodus 32:7-8

God calls them thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, handing them to Moses in the same words the people had used of Moses in verse 1. They have turned aside quickly out of the way, and the way was given at 20:4 and agreed to at 24:7. What God reports to Moses is what the narrator has already shown the reader in verses 4 through 6, told back in the same sentence the people shouted.

Exodus 32:9-10

The word stiffnecked occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and it returns at 33:3, 33:5, 34:9 and Deuteronomy 9:6. Let me alone is an odd thing to say to a man who has said nothing, and Matthew Henry reads it as leaving the door open for the intercession that follows. The offer to make of Moses a great nation is the promise given to Abram at Genesis 12:2, and it is offered a second time after the spies at Numbers 14:12.

Exodus 32:11-12

Moses hands the people straight back, calling them thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt, and reversing the pronoun of verse 7. He argues from what Egypt would say rather than from anything Israel has earned. Psalm 106:23 looks back on this moment and says Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach, to turn away his wrath.

Exodus 32:13-14

Moses' last argument is the oath God swore by his own self at Genesis 22:16, and he asks nothing on the ground of what the people deserve. The text then says the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people, while Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man that he should repent. Readers have long divided here, some taking the language as spoken after the manner of men, which is how Charles Spurgeon takes it in his sermon on the mediation of Moses, and others reading a real turn made in answer to prayer.

Exodus 32:15-16

The tables are called the work of God and the writing the writing of God, and 31:18 says they were written with the finger of God. That phrase entered Scripture at 8:19 in the mouth of Egypt's magicians, who used it of the one plague they could not copy. Moses wrote at 24:4 and God writes here, and the first thing broken after the covenant is made is the covenant document itself.

Exodus 32:17-18

Joshua hears a camp under attack and Moses hears singing, and the two men are listening to the same sound. Singing entered Scripture at 15:1 with the song at the sea, which was sung after a deliverance and to the God who gave it. Moses corrects Joshua before either of them can see anything, because he already knows from verse 7 what he is walking down into.

Exodus 32:19

Moses' anger waxed hot, which is the phrase the chapter used of God's anger at verse 10 and that Moses himself used at verse 11. He breaks the tables at the foot of the mountain where the people can see it, and Deuteronomy 9:17 says he brake them before your eyes. Whether the act is temper or a public declaration that the covenant is already broken has been read both ways, and the text records the act without giving a reason.

Exodus 32:20

The calf is burnt, ground to powder, scattered on water and made a drink, so the thing they made ends up inside them. Deuteronomy 9:21 recounts the same act and adds that Moses cast the dust into the brook that descended out of the mount. Numbers 5:24 later puts a similar act into the law, where a woman suspected of unfaithfulness drinks water carrying dust from the floor of the tabernacle.

Exodus 32:21-22

Moses puts the question to Aaron as a matter of what the people did to him, which offers Aaron the position of a man acted upon. Aaron takes it, saying the people are set on mischief, and Adam Clarke reads the reply as an excuse rather than an account. Deuteronomy 9:20 supplies what this chapter leaves out, that the LORD was angry with Aaron enough to destroy him and that Moses prayed for Aaron also.

Exodus 32:23-24

Aaron repeats the people's demand from verse 1 almost word for word, and then his account of the making parts from the narrator's. Verse 4 says he received the gold, fashioned it with a graving tool and made a molten calf, while Aaron says he threw the gold in and the calf came out. The text sets both accounts down and says nothing whatever about the difference, and Adam Clarke calls the second a subterfuge.

Exodus 32:25-26

The word rendered naked carries the sense of loosed or broken away, and Adam Clarke points to the same verb at 2 Chronicles 28:19 for Judah made naked under Ahaz. Moses stands in the gate and asks who is on the LORD's side, which requires every man in a camp of thousands to walk somewhere and be counted. The sons of Levi gather to him, and Genesis 49:5 through 7 had cursed the sword of Levi and scattered the tribe in Israel.

Exodus 32:27-28

The order is to kill inside the camp and inside families, brother, companion and neighbour, and three thousand fall that day. Deuteronomy 33:9 blesses Levi in the language of exactly this scene, that he said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him, and the blessing goes on to give Levi the law and the incense. Adam Clarke holds that the three thousand were the chief transgressors rather than a number taken at random, since the nation as a whole had been spared through Moses' prayer.

Exodus 32:29

Consecrate yourselves renders a Hebrew phrase that reads fill your hands, and it is the phrase used of the ordination of the priests at 28:41 and 29:9. What Genesis 49:7 scattered becomes at Deuteronomy 33:10 the tribe that teaches Jacob God's judgments, and the turn is dated to this day. Levi's standing in Israel rests on the one day the tribe drew a sword inside the camp.

Exodus 32:30-31

Moses goes back up with no promise that anything will come of it, saying peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin. The word atonement had entered Scripture at 29:33 with the consecration of the priests, seventeen chapters after the passover, so in Exodus it arrives with the priesthood rather than with the lamb. He states the case to God as this people have sinned a great sin, and he softens nothing before he asks.

Exodus 32:32-33

Moses offers to be blotted out of God's book in place of the people, and the Hebrew sentence breaks off before the alternative is finished, which the King James prints with a dash. Paul says something of the same shape at Romans 9:3, wishing himself accursed from Christ for his brethren, and the two may be set beside each other without claiming that Paul is quoting. The answer refuses the exchange, that whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book, which is the rule Ezekiel 18:4 later states as law.

Exodus 32:34-35

God sends an angel before them, which is what verse 1 had demanded when the people asked for gods to go before us, and Moses refuses the substitute at 33:12 through 16 and asks for the presence itself. The visitation is deferred rather than cancelled, since in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. The chapter's last words put the calf on Aaron, because they made the calf, which Aaron made, and Aaron is still the man who wears the ephod in chapter 39.