Exodus 32.15-24-Moses' Righteous Indignation In Response To The Israelites Committing The Sin Of Idolatry
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Sunday August 19, 2012
Journey Through The Bible Series: Exodus 32:15-24-Moses’ Righteous Indignation In Response To The Israelites Committing The Sin Of Idolatry
Lesson # 48
Please turn in your Bibles to Exodus 32:15
This morning we will study Exodus 32:15-24, which records Moses’ righteous indignation in response to Israel committing idolatry.
Exodus 32:15 Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets which were written on both sides; they were written on one side and the other. 16 The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing engraved on the tablets. 17 Now when Joshua heard the sound of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a sound of war in the camp.” 18 But he said, “It is not the sound of the cry of triumph, nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat; But the sound of singing I hear.” 19 It came about, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. 20 He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it. 21 Then Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?” 22 Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, that they are prone to evil. 23 For they said to me, ‘Make a god for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ 24 I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” (NASB95)
Verses 15-16 remind the reader that the two tables which contained the Ten Commandments were unique in the sense that God Himself wrote them in contrast to the laws God dictated to Moses who then wrote these laws on other tablets or papyrus or leather.
In Moses’ day, there were four writings surfaces used: (1) Stone (for official, royal inscriptions), (2) Clay tablets (mainly for cuneiform Babylonian and Assyrian), (3) Leather (various animal skins including calfskin, goatskin, sheepskin), (4) Papyrus (the least permanent of all but increasingly employed for writing at this time).
Each of the two tablets contained all Ten Commandments.
The Lord did not put five commandments on one tablet and five on the other.
This was in accordance with the standard ancient Near Eastern document preservation practices.
In the ancient Near East in Moses’ day, both the dominant state and its vassal state would have a copy of a treaty between the two.
Thus, the Lord gave Moses one copy of the Ten Commandments and the other would be the Lord’s.
In the ancient Near East, in Moses’ day, tablets would contain writing on both sides.
Thus, the fact that there was writing on both sides of each of these tablets the Lord gave to Moses was not unique.
The fact that the Ten Commandments were written on both sides of each of these tablets indicates that the writing was large enough so that more than one person could view the writing.
Thus, a group of people could look at it together.
The Ten Commandments summarized the entire Law or in other words, they summarize all 611 mandates that were found in the Mosaic Law.
The Ten Commandment and thus all 611 mandates in the Mosaic Law could be summarized as loving God and your neighbor as yourself.
In other words, the Ten Commandments stem from these two great commandments to love God and your neighbor as yourself.
This corresponds to what the Lord Jesus Christ taught in Matthew 22:37-40.
The first four of the Ten Commandments are all related to one’s relationship with God whereas the last six commandments address one’s conduct in relation to one’s fellow human being.
When Moses had finished with the Lord and the Lord told him that Israel was committing idolatry as they spoke, Moses went back down to the mountain and met up again with Joshua who was waiting at a prearranged place on the mountain.
The fact that Joshua mistook this sound as the sound of war indicates that the Israelites were out of control and disorderly.
The loss of self-control is a sin (cf. Proverbs 25:28; 1 Corinthians 7:5; Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Timothy 3:3; 2 Peter 1:6).
Joshua had been engaged in battle and the sounds he would have heard in battle were screaming, yelling and shouting (cf. Exodus 17:8-10).
All these he heard in the Israelite camp and thus his reason for thinking that there was the sound of war in the camp.
Moses knew exactly what was going on in the Israelite camp since the Lord told him what they were doing according to Exodus 32:7-8.
Exodus 32:19 tells the reader that when he saw the calf and the dancing, Moses became extremely angry and shattered the two tablets on the ground, which was not sin but righteous indignation on the part of Moses.
It was the appropriate response to what he had seen and heard in the Israelite camp and demonstrates His great respect and love for the Lord.
Righteous indignation is the legitimate anger towards evil and sin and is based upon love for God.
The Lord Jesus Christ displayed righteous indignation towards the moneychangers in the Temple (John 2:13-17).
The difference between righteous indignation and anger is the former is based upon love for God and others while the latter is selfish and self-centered.
Moses’ righteous indignation expresses the holiness of God in his life since God expresses His holiness by expressing His righteous indignation toward sin and sinners.
The fact that Moses broke the two tablets of stone on the ground which contained the Ten Commandments was deliberate on his part.
It was symbolic and for the benefit of the Israelites to show them that they had broken the covenant with the Lord, which is indicated by the fact that in the ancient Semitic world of Moses’ day, violation of a covenant was described as “breaking” of the “covenant.”
Zechariah 11:10 records a parallel event in which Zechariah broke a staff he identified as representing God’s covenant with the nations as a way of demonstrating the breaking of this covenant.
Exodus 32:19 records Moses as breaking the two tablets at “the foot of the mountain,” which is important in the Exodus narrative since the official gathering place of the Israelites was “at the foot of the mountain” (19:12) as well as the location of the worship altar described in Exodus 24:4.
Exodus 32:20 records Moses burning the golden calf with fire, which indicates that it was composed of wood overlaid with gold.
The fact that Moses grounded the calf to powder and then poured it out on water and made the Israelites drink it does not mean that he forced them to line up and partake of this mixture but rather it means that he poured the powder from the remains of the calf into the water supply of the Israelites (See Deuteronomy 9:21).
Consequently, this mixture would pass through their digestive tracts and would come out as waste and defiled and thus permanently ruined.
In Exodus 32:21, Moses’ question indicates that he initially thought that Aaron’s life was threatened, which would have caused him to perform such a terrible act and indicates that he was giving his brother the benefit of the doubt.
Even if they did threaten him, Aaron’s actions were not justified since there is no justification for sin even if your life is threatened.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego suffered the death penalty at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar instead of worshipping the gold statue the king had ordered everybody in his kingdom to worship.
Exodus 32:22-24 records Aaron’s response to his brother’s question.
In this response, Aaron does not take personal responsibility as evidenced by the fact that he said that the Israelites were prone to evil, when in fact he went right along wit their idea of making a god.
He deflects the blame away from himself to the Israelites.
His response is not justified since he could have refused to do what the people demanded.
By agreeing to the people’s demand, he too committed the sin of idolatry and thus stood condemned along with the people.
By quoting the Israelites’ reasoning for their demand, Aaron was placing blame at the feet of Moses since he was implying that if Moses had not been absent for so long that this great sin would never had happened.
Aaron’s statement that after the people gave him their gold that he threw it into the fire and out came the calf indicates that he was claiming that the calf came out of the fire miraculously, which was a lie.
Little did Aaron know that the Lord told him exactly what was going on in the Israelite camp.
Aaron committed a great sin since not only did he practice idolatry but he actually encouraged the people to commit the sin rather than rebuking them for it since he possessed no moral courage because he was a people pleaser which resulted in him greatly displeasing God.
Aaron was not loving God or his neighbor since if he did, he would have led the people away from the sin of idolatry.
Exodus 32 does not say that the Lord was angry with Aaron but Deuteronomy 9:20 does say that the Lord was angry enough to kill him, which led to Moses interceding in prayer for his older brother.