Commentaria in Exodum
Chapter the Thirty-second
The Hebrews, in Moses’ absence, melt a golden calf and adore it: whereupon God wills to destroy them; Moses prays for them, and in verse 19, coming down from the mount, breaks the tables of the law, burns the calf, slays the idolaters, and again entreats God for the people, saying, verse 32: Either forgive them this trespass, or, if thou do not, strike me out of the book that thou hast written.
1. And the people seeing that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, gathering themselves together against Aaron, said: Arise, make us gods, that may go before us: for as to this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is befallen him. 2. And Aaron said to them: Take the golden earrings from the ears of your wives, and your sons and daughters, and bring them to me. 3. And the people did what he had commanded, bringing the earrings to Aaron. 4. And when he had received them, he fashioned them by founder’s work, and made of them a molten calf. And they said: These are thy gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. 5. And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and made proclamation by the voice of a crier, saying: Tomorrow is the solemnity of the Lord. 6. And rising in the morning, they offered holocausts, and peace victims, and the people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play. 7. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Go, get thee down: thy people, which thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt, hath sinned. 8. They have quickly strayed from the way which thou didst shew them: and they have made to themselves a molten calf, and have adored it, and sacrificing victims to it, they have said: These are thy gods, O Israel, that have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. 9. And again the Lord said to Moses: I see that this people is stiffnecked: 10. Let me alone, that my wrath may be kindled against them, and that I may destroy them: and I will make of thee a great nation. 11. But Moses besought the Lord his God, saying: Why, O Lord, is thy indignation kindled against thy people, whom thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt, with great power, and with a mighty hand? 12. Let not the Egyptians say, I beseech thee: He craftily brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains, and destroy them from the earth: let thy anger cease, and be appeased upon the wickedness of thy people. 13. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thy own self, saying: I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven: and this whole land that I have spoken of, I will give to your seed, and you shall possess it for ever. 14. And the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken against his people.
15. And Moses returned from the mount, carrying the two tables of the testimony in his hand, written on both sides, 16. And made by the work of God: the writing also of God was graven in the tables. 17. And Josue hearing the noise of the people shouting, said to Moses: The noise of battle is in the camp. 18. But he answered: It is not the cry of men encouraging to fight, nor the cry of men compelling to flee: but I hear the noise of them that sing. 19. And when he came near to the camp, he saw the calf, and the dances: and being very angry, he threw the tables out of his hand, and broke them at the foot of the mount. 20. And taking the calf which they had made, he burnt it, and reduced it to powder, which he strewed upon water, and gave thereof to the children of Israel to drink. 21. And he said to Aaron: What has this people done to thee, that thou hast brought upon them a most heinous sin? 22. And he answered: Let not my lord be angry: for thou knowest this people, that they are prone to evil. 23. They said to me: Make us gods, that may go before us: for as to this Moses, the man that brought us out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is befallen him. 24. And I said to them: Which of you hath any gold? And they brought it, and gave it me: and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out. 25. And when Moses saw that the people was naked (for Aaron had stripped them for shame of the filth, and had set them naked among their enemies), 26. Standing in the gate of the camp, he said: If any man be on the Lord’s side, let him join with me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. 27. And he said to them: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: Put every man his sword upon his thigh: go, and return from gate to gate through the midst of the camp, and let every man kill his brother, and friend, and neighbour. 28. And the sons of Levi did according to the words of Moses, and there were slain that day about three and twenty thousand men. 29. And Moses said: You have consecrated your hands this day to the Lord, every man in his son and in his brother, that a blessing may be given you.
30. And on the next day Moses spoke to the people: You have sinned a very great sin: I will go up to the Lord, if by any means I may be able to entreat him for your crime. 31. And returning to the Lord, he said: I beseech thee, this people hath sinned a heinous sin, and they have made to themselves gods of gold: either forgive them this trespass, 32. Or if thou do not, strike me out of the book that thou hast written. 33. And the Lord said to him: He that hath sinned against me, him will I strike out of my book: 34. But go thou, and lead this people whither I have told thee: my angel shall go before thee: and I, in the day of revenge, will visit this sin also of theirs. 35. And the Lord struck the people for the guilt of the calf which Aaron made.
1. ARISE, MAKE US GODS, THAT MAY GO BEFORE US.—“Gods,” that is, a god; for they asked only for some one. Whence Aaron, satisfying them, made only one calf. But in the Hebrew language the names of God, namely Elohim, Adonai, Shaddai, are plural, and the Hebrews join to them now singular verbs and adjectives, now plural, as may be seen in Josue 24:19, Deut. 5:26, in the Hebrew.
The Latin interpreter has imitated this, rendering gods, not god, and that he might set the idolatry of the people more clearly before the eyes: for idolaters, besides the one true God, believe in and worship another, so that according to them several gods must be posited; and because they, as they have turned aside from the one God to a second, so easily slip from this one to many others. St. Jerome noted this on Daniel 3: “This,” he says, “they say is the custom of Holy Scripture, to call one idol in the plural.”
Note here the marvellous ingratitude of the people toward Moses and God, and likewise their blindness; for they despise Moses their leader, so kind and beneficent, because they cannot bear delay: they seek gods for leaders, but such as do not yet exist, and which Aaron is to make: they spurn the true God, who by so many and so great miracles had delivered them from the hard servitude of Egypt, who was leading them into Chanaan, with whom a little before they had made a solemn covenant, chap. 24, who had given them the spoils of the Egyptians, and these they now, contemning God, had consecrated, together with themselves, to an idol, namely a calf.
Thou wilt say: The Hebrews had the pillar for their guide on the way; why then do they seek other leaders, namely gods to go before them?
I answer: The pillar had stood fixed all the time that Moses was on the mount, and did not move to go before the Hebrews on the way; but they themselves desired to break up the camp and hasten to the promised land. They ask, therefore, not for mortal leaders, who, like Moses, might be taken from them, but for gods, such as they had seen in Egypt, namely that Aaron should make them an image of a calf or ox, that is, of Apis, into which the divinity might insinuate itself, give responses, and go before them on the way into Chanaan.
FOR AS TO THIS MOSES, THE MAN.—The Hebrews speak of Moses contemptuously, as of an unknown man. Josephus asserts that some of them thought Moses had been devoured by beasts, others that he had been snatched away by God.
R. Solomon fables that a demon showed the bier of Moses in the air to the Hebrews, that they might think him dead.
2. TAKE THE EARRINGS.—In Hebrew, break off the earrings: aptly; “for they were about to lose, to their own judgment, the true ornaments of the ears, the voices of God,” written on the tables of the law, says Tertullian, Scorpiace, chap. 3. And St. Ambrose to Romulus, explaining this place:
“Fittingly,” he says, “are the earrings taken from the women, lest Eve should again hear the voice of the serpent. And therefore, because they had heard sacrilege, from the melting of their earrings the image of sacrilege was melted”; and likewise of the rings, “because they could not have the seal of faith.”