Exodus 32:27

27. Slay every man his brother Those who were guilty of this breach of the covenant (comp . Exodus 32:33) were liable to the penalty of a capital crime, and hence the order for this fearful slaughter . That this order was not intended or understood to warrant an indiscriminate and wholesale massacre is obvious from what follows. Only “about three thousand men” were slain, (Exodus 32:28,) or one in two hundred of the adult Israelites, (compare Exodus 12:37,) and had these Levitical swordsmen understood Moses’s words literally, they would have felt obliged to slay one another as well as all in the camp . It is not improbable that the three thousand who were slain resisted these Levites, or had refused to drink of the water, (Exodus 32:20,) or in some way persisted in their sin . In going in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp the armed executioners of the order may have been safely left to determine who the most guilty parties were. Many facts, known to these Levites, who had seen the operations of the calf worship from its beginning, may be assumed to have guided them in their work of retribution.