When the people saw that Moses delayed to come
down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him,
“Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who
brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”
2 Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears
of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So
all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to
Aaron. 4 He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast
an image of a calf; and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought
you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an
altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a
festival to the Lord.” 6 They
rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of
well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.
7 The
Lord said to Moses, “Go down at
once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted
perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I
commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have
worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this
people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone, so that my
wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make
a great nation.”
11 But
Moses implored the Lord his God,
and said, “O Lord, why does your
wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt
with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians
say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the
mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your
fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13
Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them
by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the
stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your
descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14 And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster
that he planned to bring on his people.
Exodus 32:1-14 is the incident of
the golden calf. It will raise the obvious question of idolatry. I will want to
raise the question of how we as modern readers may still have a problem with
idolatry. In an indirect way, it raises the question of the extent to which
spiritual leaders accommodate the beliefs and values of the surrounding
culture. It raises the question of the anger or wrath of the Lord and the extent
to which it determines divine action. It even raises the question of boldness
in intercessory prayer. I hope you will want to explore these matters for a few
moments.
Exodus 32:1-6 is part of the J
document contribution to the incident of the golden calf, the rest of it
including 32:15-24, 30-35. In I Kings 12:26-32, we find Jeroboam (d. 910 BC)
making two calves of gold and telling the people of the northern kingdom that
their gods are here. These gods brought them out of Egypt. He then put one calf
in Dan and one in Bethel. He had a festival in which he appointed priests that
did not come from the tribe of Levi. He made sacrifices to the calves he had
made. The relationship with Exodus 32 is obvious, but scholars will debate
which way the influence goes. Hosea (750-730) says in 8:5, that the Lord
rejects the calf while the anger of the Lord burns against them. In 10:5, he
says the people of Samaria long for the calf of Beth-aven, its people mourn for
it, its idolatrous priests wail over it, for the glory has departed from it.
Clearly, the northern kingdom had worship that included the golden calf. In the
incident in Exodus, we find the first two commandments already broken. In the
context of the J story, the first human beings fall away, humanity before the
flood falls away, and now Israel falls away. In the context
of the Exodus account, Exodus 32:1-6 show us that instead of a unified people,
they were once again just a motley group of runaway slaves, complaining all the
way. It almost seems as if the length of time Moses spent with God on the
mountain became a sign that Yahweh was gone as well. The people come to Aaron,
wanting him to make gods for them, for after all, Yahweh was not present. The
puzzling thing here is that Aaron caves without a fight. The people speak and
he obeys. He does not even show any hesitation or reluctance. He may well have
welcomed the power he seems to have. He seems willing and even eager to
accommodate the popular demand. Today, we might think of the sub-culture to
which we belong. Let us say one is progressive in political thought. It can be
quite tempting for the Christian among them simply to join with the chorus of
progressive thought, giving the progressive group what it wants from anyone who
is among them. The danger for the Christian in this scenario is that
progressive thought has become the means to any influence you have. Thinking progressively
helps you to fit in with the crowd. You become like Aaron. Now, what I have
said about the progressive sub-group is something I could duplicate in many
other sub-groups in America today.
As
we continue, the people willingly surrender their gold and form an image of a
calf. The people then declared that the image they made is their god, who
brought them out of Egypt. This at least suggests arrogance and pride. If gods
they have made delivered them from Egypt, then the people of Israel are the
source of their deliverance. The fact that Aaron designates the following day
as a festival to Yahweh, of all things, suggests that he may have thought of
all this was a harmless act. Early the next morning, they offered burnt
offerings and sacrifices of well-being. As was typical of such offerings in
Israel, the people ate and drank together, and then partied the rest of the
day.
This
reminds me of a very different little story that might help illustrate the
shock of this event. One day, after a college economics professor had gone over
an exam taken by the class, a bewildered student approached him and asked to
have his test re‑evaluated. As tactfully as possible, the student pointed out
that the professor must have made a mistake. He deducted thirty points on a
question that was valued at twenty‑five points. The professor looked over the
paper and then handed it back with a pained expression: “But you were so
wrong,” he told the student.
Aaron
and the people were so wrong in their considerations that led them to make the
golden calf. They were wrong in every way possible.
We
can distance this event from our experience quite easily. We do not fashion
gods to worship in a religious setting. Such actions are for pre-modern times
and for primitive people. We have no temptation to engage in idolatry of that
type. For this, we can have some gratitude for the continuing influence of
Judaism and Christianity. Yet, we rightly ponder whether we have found other
ways to engage in idolatry.
A god is that to which we look for all
good and in which we find refuge in every time of need. To have a god is
nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart. As I have
often said, the trust and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If
your faith and trust are right then your god is the true God. On the other
hand, if your trust is false and wrong, then you have not the true God. For
these two belong together, faith and God. That to which your heart clings and
entrusts itself is, I say, really your god.[1]
“Idolatry”
implies supplanting the true object of worship with something false. We have a
sense that our fragmented and isolated lives depend upon their connection to
something much larger. At some level, we serve and worship that larger whole of
which are simply a part. The question before humanity is whether we worship
truly. When we fashion gods that are comfortable to us, make us feel good,
allow us to indulge in pleasure, power, materialism, then we fashion gods to
our liking. We may have made an idol of progress, nation, race, family, and
science. We can make an idol out of our worldview, political philosophy, or
ideology. We may make an idol out of some generally good things, such as the
Bible or tolerance. Such gods are little more than our desires and hopes, with
an exclamation mark. Such gods we make in our image. When we turn aside to this
way of worship, we show our kinship with people throughout history who have
rebelled against what God wants. Yet, the content of what or whom we worship
matters for how we live. If we do not worship truly, we will not live truly.
Martin Luther once said, “Superstition, idolatry and hypocrisy have ample
wages, but truth goes a-begging. “ Clearly, we will need to receive a
revelation from God. True worship relates us to the God who engages us in the
journey of life. God wants us to be part of a faithful community of people,
bound in covenant to God and to each other. God cares enough about us that God
is angry when we are not faithful to that covenant. Yet, mercy and grace cause
God to keep working with us, as disobedient as we may become, to shape us into
a people that honor the covenant.
Exodus 32: 7-10
give Yahweh's perspective on the sin of the Israelites at Sinai. For some scholars, this passage is an
insertion by the Deuteronomic historian into the story of the golden calf. The
Lord is angry at how quickly the people have turned aside from the way the Lord
commanded them. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprising, instead of being people
of the Lord, the Lord says (with a wink and a smile?) they are now the people
of Moses. They are behaving like ignorant heathens. They have already broken
the first two commandments. They are far from forming an obedient and loving
community. The anger of the Lord is so “hot” that the Lord wants to consume
them with fire and make out of Moses a great nation. The Lord is willing to
make of Moses someone like Noah. The Lord is willing to start over in forming a
new people of the Lord. Thus, we can see that this incident brings everything
in the biblical story of the covenant into question. The entire notion of the
election of a people for a covenant with the Lord based upon grace is now in
question. These people are to be separate from the nations in the sense that
the Lord has chosen them to fulfill a divine mission. The existence of Israel
is at risk.[2]
Exodus 32:11-14
offers a prayer of Moses. We see a close parallel in Deuteronomy 9:25-29. In
response to the anger of the Lord, Moses prayed. His prayer is for the people
at whom the Lord is angry. In contrast with the people, Moses recognizes Yahweh
as the one who delivered the people of the Lord. The Lord delivered them with great power and with a mighty hand. Moses
seems to want to remind the Lord (with a wink and a smile?) that these people
do not belong to Moses but rather, belong to the Lord. He does not want Egypt to
say that Yahweh had evil intent in bringing Israel from Egypt only to die in
the wilderness. The specific intercessory prayer of Moses is that the Lord
would turn away from anger the Lord has toward the people of the Lord. He wants
the Lord to have a change of mind. We might translate that Moses wants the Lord
to repent. He wants the Lord to remember the covenant with the Patriarchs and
the promise that they would have many descendants and enter the Promised Land.
The result of his prayer, surprisingly, was the Lord had a change of mind. The
Lord “repented.” The Lord and Moses now face the task of leading “a
stiff-necked” people. Moses has been liberator, a messenger from the Lord, a
lawgiver, and a prophet. Now, he plays the role of mediator. He is the one who
speaks with God face to face, as a man with a friend.[3]
As troubling as
a prayer that changes the mind of the Lord might be, it says something
important to us about the wrath or anger of God. Anger does not determine the
acts of God. The anger of the Lord is more like a sudden outburst that burns
when the people scorn the holiness of God and fall away from God.[4]
Thus, anger is not an attribute of God, for God can exercise a change of mind
or even self-control concerning anger.[5]
We would not think of asking God to repent of goodness, love or compassion (I
hope), for these are attributes of God. The burning of the wrath of God is for
a moment, but the persistent patience and love of God abide. Through the
intercession of Moses as he appeals to the covenant righteousness of God and
the helplessness of the people of the Lord when confronted with divine wrath, the gracious
will of God overcomes the momentary working of wrath.[6] Yes, such behavior on
the part of the Lord startles us. However, we should not view it as a sign of
divine weakness. Rather, we need to see it a sign of divine grace. The grace of
God got the best of the justifiable anger of God. In this way, the story is microcosm
of the biblical pattern. Judgment is never the final word from the Lord.[7]
[1] Martin Luther,
"The Large Catechism," The Book of Concord, Theodore G.
Tappert, ed., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959, p. 365
[2] Barth (Church Dogmatics IV.1 [60.2] 425-428)
[3] Barth (Church Dogmatics IV.1 [60.2] 425-428)
[4] Pannenberg,
Systematic Theology Volume 1, 439.
[5] Pannenberg,
Systematic Theology Volume 1, 439.
[6] (Systematic
Theology Vol I, 439)
[7] Anthony Spina
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