Exodus32chapter 32

The golden calf is the chapter the classical commentators work hardest, and Rashi begins with the clock. Moses had told the people he would return within the first six hours of the fortieth day, and they counted the day of his ascent among the forty (Rashi on Exodus 32:1:1). Aaron asked for the ornaments of the wives and children in the hope that the delay would save the day, and the men tore off their own instead (Rashi on Exodus 32:2:1). On the making of the calf Rashi gives two readings of the same words, one taking them of gold tied in a cloth and the other of a goldsmith's engraving tool (Rashi on Exodus 32:4:1). Sforno reads God's complaint about the speed of the fall as a gift cut short. "I have not even been able to complete the gift of the Torah I had wanted to give to you" (Sforno on Exodus 32:8:1, from Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY). Rashi reads the words let me alone as an opening rather than a refusal. They told Moses that prayer would hold the sentence back (Rashi on Exodus 32:10:1, citing Shemot Rabbah 42:9 and Berakhot 32a). The plea itself he fills out from the Midrash. Israel had broken ten commandments, and Abraham had stood ten trials whose reward was still owed. Moses asked that the one be set against the other (Rashi on Exodus 32:13:1, citing Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 24 and Shemot Rabbah 44:4). The writing on the tablets could be read from both sides, which he calls a miraculous piece of work (Rashi on Exodus 32:15:1, citing Shabbat 104a). The breaking of the tablets he explains by a rule of law. Moses reasoned that a stranger may not eat the Passover, and that the people had put themselves outside the whole Torah (Rashi on Exodus 32:19:1, citing Shabbat 87a). Rashi is quoted from the Rosenbaum and Silbermann edition of 1929 to 1934, public domain. Ibn Ezra comments at Exodus 32:14:1 and Malbim at Exodus 32:23:1, both cited by reference.