Commentaria in Exodum
18. IT IS NOT THE CRY OF MEN ENCOURAGING TO FIGHT, NOR THE CRY OF MEN COMPELLING TO FLEE.—The Chaldee: It is not the voice of those crying: Courage; nor of those crying: Weakness; or, it is not the cry of the strong, who conquer, nor of the weak, who are conquered. For those who conquer in battle utter joyful, exultant voices, as of men already victorious; the conquered, sad, rude and mournful wailings, while some are wounded, some give up the ghost, some are trampled underfoot, some thrust others in flight; whence R. Solomon renders it clearly: This is not the voice of men crying: Victory, victory; nor the voice of the weak, shouting: Woe, woe! or, Flee, flee; the Septuagint: it is not the voice of those who lead the flight; Oleaster: it is not the voice of those who answer with strength, that is, who boast of their forces, nor of those who answer with cutting down, that is, that they are cut down. What voice is it then? But the voice, he says, of those singing; the Chaldee, of those playing; the Septuagint: I hear the voice of those who lead the wine.
19. AND BEING VERY ANGRY, HE THREW THE TABLES OUT OF HIS HAND, AND BROKE THEM.—Moses did this moved by holy zeal against the public impiety, thinking it absurd to bring the law of God to a drunken people, and to a people so wickedly breaking the law by their idol. So St. Chrysostom, Jerome, book 2 Against Jovinian, and Ambrose, book On Elias and Fasting, chap. 6: “The tables of the law,” he says, “which abstinence received, drunkenness caused to be broken.” Mystically it was signified that the former law, namely the old, was to be abolished, another succeeding, namely the Gospel law. So St. Ambrose on Psalm 26, Augustine, Question 144, and others.
On account of this breaking of the tables of the law a fast was afterwards appointed and fixed for the Jews on the seventeenth day of the fourth month, on which this breaking occurred, as is plain from the Calendar of the Hebrews, which Genebrard translated into Latin and prefixed to his commentaries on the Psalms; for that this breaking occurred on that day is plain from the fact that Moses went up into the mount immediately after the promulgation of the law, which was made by an angel on Sinai on the sixth day of the third month, as I showed on chap. 19, verses 11 and 16, and remained there forty days; whence it follows that he came down from the mount to the people, and consequently broke the tables, on the seventeenth day of the fourth month: for count forty days from the sixth day of the third month, you will come to the sixteenth day of the fourth month; and on the next day, namely the seventeenth, Moses came down, and then broke the tables.
Hence St. Jerome, Rupert, Ribera and others interpret that of Zachary 8:19: “The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Juda,” in this way, that the fast of the fourth month was that which was appointed for the Jews on account of the tables of the law being broken; the fast of the fifth was appointed because in the fifth month the Hebrews were commanded not to go up the mountain, but for forty years to go round by long circuits to the Holy Land, that all who had murmured in the wilderness might die, Num. 14. The fast of the seventh was that which was appointed on account of the murder of Godolias, of which 4 Kings 25:25. The fast of the tenth was appointed because in that month Ezechiel and the rest who were in the Babylonian captivity heard that Jerusalem was taken and the temple burned.
20. AND TAKING THE CALF WHICH THEY HAD MADE, HE BURNT IT,—he cast the calf into the fire, certain herbs being mixed in, that it might be melted into a mass, and as it were reduced to a coal.
to fineness, as if to say: Moses crushed that coal, or mass drawn from the fire, and ground it to minute powder.
WHICH HE STREWED UPON WATER, AND GAVE THEREOF TO THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL TO DRINK.—Moses strewed the powder of the golden calf on the torrent which came down from Sinai and passed through the camp of the Hebrews, at the time when the Hebrews came to draw water from it, and so in the very drawing of the water; nay, as it seems, he even compelled them to drink of it. Moses did this from zeal, that the apostates might swallow their idol, and that they might learn to despise what they see cast into the privy, says St. Jerome to Fabiola.
Mystically St. Augustine, book 22 Against Faustus, chap. 91: The calf, he says, is the idolatry of the Gentiles, which by the fire of the zeal of Christ the Lord, and the edge of the word, and the water of baptism, has been absorbed by those very persons whom it tried to absorb, namely the Gentiles themselves.
22. FOR THOU KNOWEST THIS PEOPLE, THAT THEY ARE PRONE TO EVIL.—The Septuagint reads, thou knowest the impetuosity of this people, their eagerness, and as it were raging impulse, which I alone could not resist.
24. I CAST IT INTO THE FIRE (that from it, melted, it might flow into the founder’s mould of the calf), AND THIS CALF CAME OUT.—Aaron, then, does not deny the crime, but extenuates it in words, to soften his brother’s anger.
25. AND WHEN MOSES SAW THAT THE PEOPLE WAS NAKED.—The Jerusalem Targum renders: Moses seeing that the Hebrews were stripped of the golden crown which had been upon their heads with the name Tetragrammaton, as a sign of liberty and obedience. For the Hebrews, especially the princes, seem after the law was received on Sinai, in token of the faith and obedience promised to God, to have adorned their heads with crowns of honour, with the name Tetragrammaton inscribed on them, which in the following year, when the tabernacle was erected, was granted to Aaron alone, as the Lord commanded Moses on the mount, Exod. chap. 28, verse 36. So R. Solomon, and Jerome Prado on chap. 24 of Ezechiel, p. 312: Stripped, he says, that is, shorn of its locks, spoiled of its hair, deprived of its crown and diadem, which it had worn as a badge of liberty.
But this is guessing, says Abulensis; for Scripture makes no mention of these crowns, having the name Tetragrammaton: nay, it assigns the name Tetragrammaton to the pontiff alone on the plate, and the Hebrews at all times attributed this name to him alone. Secondly, the ornament of which the Hebrews were stripped was taken away by Aaron, as follows; for it says: “For Aaron had stripped them.” But Aaron did not take away from the Hebrews crowns, but earrings, to form the calf. Thirdly, the Hebrews after the sin did not lay aside their ornament, therefore neither crowns if they had any: for this ornament they at length lay aside, by God’s command, in the following chapter, verse 6. Again Vatablus renders: Moses seeing that the people was laid bare, that is, that its infamous idolatry was laid bare, by which they had forsaken their God, their leader and protector, before the neighbouring nations, which therefore might have invaded and oppressed the Hebrews. But this exposition also is less fitting, and corresponds less to the Hebrew para, which signifies not to lay bare but to strip, to enervate, to make unwarlike and weak.
I say, then, that the people was stripped both of its earrings, which it had given to Aaron to make the calf, and consequently and rather (for the loss of earrings was small) of its honour, and of the help and aid of God, whom by this crime of theirs it had forsaken: so that if enemies had then rushed upon it, God in anger withdrawing his protection, the people would doubtless have been laid low and slain, as happened in Num. 14:45. And this might easily happen, since the neighbouring enemies knew that the Hebrews had now by this calf forsaken their God, and therefore were in turn forsaken by him by whom they had always been so miraculously brought out and protected, and so easily that they could be cast down by them, conquered and destroyed.
FOR AARON HAD STRIPPED THEM (both of their earrings, as I said, and of the help of God) FOR SHAME OF THE FILTH.—In Hebrew, for a mockery to their enemies. For the Hebrew word shimtsah signifies a hissing, a whisper, derision, mockery. So the Septuagint. Our Interpreter explains more distinctly the twofold evil that befell the people from Aaron’s calf, and says first that because of the filth, that is, this their idol of the calf (for the Hebrews call idols gillulim, that is, dung, because like filth and dung they are to be abhorred, as is said in Deut. 7, last verse), the people had been stripped of its former honour, which was that this people was and was held to be the people of God. For that honour had now by the calf been turned into disgrace, so that the Hebrews were now a mockery to their neighbouring enemies. He says secondly that this people, forsaken by God, stood as it were naked and unarmed among so many and so cruel enemies. Hence he says: “And had set them naked among their enemies.”
26. STANDING IN THE GATE OF THE CAMP,—at the entrance of the camp: for the camp of the Hebrews was not surrounded by a wall like a city, so as to have gates properly so called.
HE SAID: IF ANY MAN BE ON THE LORD’S SIDE, LET HIM JOIN WITH ME,—as if to say: Let him who is not the servant and worshipper of the calf, but of Jehovah, that is, of the Lord, and who has zeal for the Lord to avenge the injury done him by this calf, be joined to me.