Exodus 32

(2.)

The Covenant Broken and Renewed. Chaps. 32-34.

INTRODUCTORY.

There is nothing in the range of Hebrew literature that serves more impressively than this chapter to show in its darkest aspects the hardness of the people’s hearts, and the necessity of a most severe legislation to secure a cultivation of the moral sense of Israel. It seems almost incredible that, under the shadow of Sinai, and so soon after all the terrible displays of God’s presence and power recorded in chap. 20, this people could have so wickedly turned to the worship of Jehovah in the image of a golden calf. “The people had to a great extent lost the patriarchal faith, and were but imperfectly instructed in the reality of a personal, unseen God. Being disappointed at the long absence of Moses, they seem to have imagined that he had deluded them, and had probably been destroyed amidst the thunders of the mountain. They accordingly gave way to their superstitious fears, and fell back on that form of idolatry that was most familiar to them. See on Exodus 32:4. The narrative of the circumstances is more briefly given by Moses at a later period in one of his addresses to the people. Deuteronomy 9:8-21; Deuteronomy 9:25-29; Deuteronomy 10:1-5; Deuteronomy 10:8-11. It is worthy of remark that Josephus, in his very characteristic chapter on the giving of the law, ( Ant . , 3: 5,) says nothing whatever of this act of apostasy, though he relates that Moses twice ascended the mountain, and renews his own profession that he is faithfully following the authority of the Holy Scriptures . Philo speaks of the calf as an imitation of the idolatry of Egypt, but he takes no notice of Aaron’s share in the sin . ” Speaker’s Commentary .