Exodus 32:20

20. Took… burnt… ground… strewed “We need not suppose that each incident is here placed in strict order of time . What is related in this verse must have occupied some time, and may have followed the rebuke of Aaron. Moses appears to have thrown the calf into the fire to destroy its form, and then to have pounded or filed the metal to powder, which he cast into the brook. Deuteronomy 9:21. He then made the Israelites drink of the water of the brook . The act was, of course, a symbolical one . The idol was brought to nothing, and the people were made to swallow their own sin . ” Comp . Micah 7:13-14. Speaker’s Commentary . In Deuteronomy 9:21, Moses says: “I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust . ” Compare the symbolical act of making the people drink of it with the drinking the water of jealousy prescribed for a woman suspected of adultery . Numbers 5:11-31.