Exodus 32:2, commentary and pictures

Aaron ordered the people to break off the golden earrings of their wives, sons and daughters and bring them to him, and they willingly surrendered them to supply the gold from which the calf was made. Moses was delayed on the mount receiving the law while the cloud of the Presence still rested before Israel, and Aaron, left in charge, faced a discontented and impatient people led by the mixed multitude in demanding visible gods to go before them in place of Moses. His order was a feeble expedient rather than firm resistance, for he yielded from fear for his life and desire to please the people instead of standing nobly for God, hoping pride in their ornaments would make them refuse, but the hope failed. By calmly carrying out their plan for gathering gold and making the idol, he gave decisive sanction to the apostasy and led Israel into grave transgression of the first and second commandments only weeks after hearing the law proclaimed from Sinai. The faithfully recorded failure stands as a warning for God's people today, especially leaders, not to preserve peace at the cost of truth by yielding to clamoring demands, but to firmly reprove sin and hold loyalty under temptation.

Setting at Sinai

Moses was delayed forty days on the mount with God, receiving the law and the sacred oracles and the stone tables, while the cloud of the Presence still rested before Israel and the people remained at the foot in sight of the mount where God's power and voice and smoking glory and presence had been revealed. During that absence Aaron had been left in charge of Israel, entrusted with the leadership of the congregation. While they waited daily for Moses to come down from the flaming cloud, the people grew discontented and impatient and unbelieving, and the mixed multitude of Egyptians who came out with Israel through intermarriage were first in murmuring and led the apostasy.

That company gathered in large numbers around Aaron's tent and demanded visible gods to go before them in the place of Moses. They wanted some image to represent God and to guide them through the wilderness and even back to Egypt, with the calf-worship of Egypt in their minds where the ox or calf was a symbol of deity. They claimed Moses would never return and that the cloud that had led them now rested on the mount and would no longer guide them, and at the suggestion of those who had practiced calf worship they desired to copy Egyptian idolatry and, if Moses did not return, to carry the image back to Egypt and win favor by acknowledging it as their god.

In answer Aaron told them to break off the golden earrings in the ears of their wives and sons and daughters and bring them to him. They willingly surrendered the ornaments, and that gold supplied the material from which the calf was made.

Aaron's Weak Compliance

Aaron yielded to the demand for an idol from fear for his own safety and life, from desire to please the people and keep their favor, and from weakness of will, instead of standing firmly and nobly for God's honor and trusting God with his life. He betrayed his sacred responsibility as guardian of the congregation by telling them to bring their gold and helping bring about their idolatry. He failed to stop the rebellion when it first began because he feared offending the people, and his silence and effort to please them led him to take part in making an idol for them to worship.

He first remonstrated against their plans but stopped reasoning when he thought them determined to carry them out. At the very first permission he gave to go contrary to God's commands in the least particular he lost his power of command. That first beginning of wrong let a spirit of revelry, hilarity and commonness into the camp, and as a result the spirit of idolatry came in. The current thus set in motion could not be stayed until stern and decisive measures had been taken.

His order to break off the golden earrings in the ears of wives, sons and daughters and bring them to him was not firm resistance but a feeble expedient, hoping that pride in their ornaments would lead the people to refuse such a sacrifice. The hope failed because they willingly surrendered the ornaments, supplying the gold from which he made the molten calf in imitation of the gods of Egypt. He proceeded with calm assurance to carry out their plan for gathering gold, making the idol and building an altar where sacrifice was offered to it, and submitted to hear the people proclaim it as the gods that brought them up out of Egypt. By taking the lead in the idolatry rather than standing for God, he dishonored God, gave their sin decisive sanction, emboldened Israel to go to greater lengths in sin than had before entered their minds, and became responsible for the apostasy though he later blamed the people.

If he had unswervingly maintained his own allegiance to God irrespective of consequences, exercised his authority to hold the congregation back from wrongdoing, spoken a timely courageous word of opposition citing the perils of Sinai and reminding them of their solemn covenant to obey the law, and firmly stopped the rebellion at the start, the evil would have been checked and turned in the right direction. A decisive stand at the beginning could have prevented the course that cost him his authority and brought grave consequences. His course revealed a man of much ability yet weak in will, allowing another to be conscience for him and to think for him, speaking after others had spoken and acting as they acted instead of leaning wholly upon God and refusing to be swayed in matters of conscience. Though he claimed to bear the burden of the work as well as Moses and to have the Lord speak by him as well as by Moses, his act proved his weakness, in contrast to Moses who felt his weakness under a work committed to him as to no other man and made God ever his counselor. His defective administration of Israel was the same failure he showed with his own children in his home, and his divided, compromised yielding in crisis marred the record of an otherwise noble life with grievous sin and an example of weakness.

Israel's Unbelief and Idolatry

The gathering of the gold was unbelief and backsliding after beholding God's presence, carried on at the foot of the smoking mount where His voice could be heard and the glory of His presence was revealed. Before Moses had been away forty days the people brought their gold to substitute a golden calf for Jehovah, wanting to go back to Egypt and falling back into old habits and old practices instead of standing on the words of the living God. Because they did not substantiate their course on God's words it led them to make a calf and worship that calf instead of serving the living God, trusting in man and making flesh their arm instead of seeking God in earnestness and simplicity and serving Him with heart and mind and strength. It was substituting their own ideas and inventions for God, thereby degrading and belittling their conception of Him.

From that gold was made a molten calf in imitation of the gods of Egypt, modeled on the ox or calf as a symbol of deity at the suggestion of those who had practiced calf worship in Egypt. The people desired some image to represent God and to go before them in the place of Moses, though God had given no similitude of Himself and had prohibited any material representation, seeking by the miracles in Egypt and at the Red Sea to establish faith in Himself as the invisible, all-powerful Helper, the only true God. In making the calf they represented the glory of the invisible God by the similitude of an ox, and Aaron submitted to hear the people proclaim it as the gods that brought them up out of Egypt, even falsely presenting the calf as the one who had brought Israel out. Although a feast was proclaimed to Jehovah, the worship did not change its real object, for it was a return to Egyptian sun-worship with the sun-god represented by the calf.

This was grave apostasy and an insult to Jehovah committed only a few weeks after Israel had heard the law proclaimed from Sinai amid sublime demonstrations of divine power, while Moses' absence tested their faith. By this idolatry so recently and expressly forbidden they turned from God to worship something made by their own hands, transgressing the first and second commandments and kindling God's anger against them. It was an offense against the Angel who was leading Israel, whose power in the deliverance from Egypt and through the journey should have inspired faith and forever closed every expression of ingratitude.

The very first permission to go contrary to God's commands in the least particular let a spirit of reveling and hilarity and commonness into the camp, and as a result the spirit of idolatry came in and set in motion a current that could not be stayed until stern and decisive measures had been taken. The calf became the focus of a festival marked by eating, drinking, and heathen licentiousness. In that shameful apostasy Israel's leading men brought their hidden designs into the open, and Aaron could not be depended on as the people turned aside from the way God had commanded.

Covenant Broken and Punished

Only a few weeks after pledging obedience at Sinai, Israel broke its covenant by worshiping a graven image made from the gathered gold, violating the loyalty to Jehovah the people had pledged and turning aside from the condition that obedience would make them kings and priests. That breaking of the promise to keep the commandments from Sinai was open defiance and disloyalty, treason against God's authority. The breach exposed their sinfulness and their inability to keep God's law without Christ, bringing them to see their need for pardon and a Saviour.

The idolatrous worship brought God's anger and displeasure, seen in broken ranks and missing numbers, and Moses' breaking of the tablets signified that God had broken His covenant with them. After the transgression in making the calf, Moses pleaded with God on the people's behalf. God allowed them freedom and opportunity to repent before judgment fell.

When the call went out for all on the Lord's side to take position, those who yielded were preserved alive while those who would not come lost their lives, and three thousand men perished. Many lay in their graves as the result of the devising that led Israel into idolatry. That swift judgment upon persistent rebellion protected Israel and others from greater corruption and ruin, taught that crime must be punished, and showed that the Lord thus tests His people.

Aaron's own failure in carrying out the people's plans while left in charge during the giving of the stone tables was so grave that the Lord would have slain him had Moses not interceded and prayed for him.

Warning for Leaders Today

The golden calf episode to which the command to break off the golden earrings belongs stands faithfully recorded as a warning and example for later generations to avoid its evil. It testifies to the guilt and punishment of idolatry and at the same time to divine justice and long-suffering mercy. In it Israel broke pledged loyalty to Jehovah only weeks after promising obedience, openly defying the law while Moses was forty days and nights on the mount without eating or drinking. When Moses came down he called for all on the Lord's side to take their position with Him, and those who yielded were preserved alive while those who refused lost their lives, three thousand men perishing for refusing to come. The same test of loyalty under temptation will come in the present day, so young and old must be students of the Bible and obey the Word to gain strength of character under every temptation and not lose hold upon God, with special warning against pleasure-seeking especially among youth and instruction for development of Christian character.

Leaders must not repeat Aaron's course when he gave in to the people's demand, directed them to bring their gold earrings, and set in motion the making of the calf for worship. He failed to stop the rebellion at its beginning from fear of offending the people, and his silence and effort to please them drew him into part in the idolatry. As the respected leader he could have spoken decisively against calf worship and prevented the disgrace to God's people, but his failure was cowardice, and leaders must take care not to give counsel that leads people into sin. They must not yield to clamoring people, side with men who oppose the work of God and resist light and evidence without repenting, or cooperate with people whose influence opposed God's work. Men called by God to the work, including men of ability on the conference committee, must not do as Aaron did but must build up the cause in right lines, firmly reproving sin and speaking truth rather than preserving peace at the cost of truth.

To act like Aaron is to take matters into one's own hands, disregard the Lord's counsel, and stand opposed to God's word. It is to direct others in disobedience as Aaron directed the people to bring their family gold, using influence to lead people away from what God commanded and to encourage them in a wrong course. Such a course harms others by confirming them in spiritual blindness and making warnings ineffective. The same part is acted when men once used by God despite infirmities and oft-repeated blind movements, whom He corrected in mistakes and reproved in wrongdoing, turn because of severe reproofs to destroy confidence in messages of reproof and warning and make of none effect the word sent through the working of His Spirit. In doing the enemy's work by sneering at and scorning messages of heavenly origin sent to prepare a people to stand in the last days, they spoil their record and prove weighed in the balances and found wanting, not to be trusted but betraying the interests of the cause, as when one supporting men in a wrong course imperiled the cause and then left instead of restoring what his actions had weakened.

The command marks Israel's backsliding after beholding God's presence in the mount, for before Moses had been away forty days they brought their gold to substitute a calf for Jehovah. That was trusting in man and making flesh their arm instead of seeking God in earnestness and simplicity and serving Him with heart and mind and strength. The same has been done in churches and institutions, and the call is to return to where they were before the backsliding commenced, returning to God in penitence and contrition and trusting in Him and not in man. Cherished idols in small matters as well as large separate from God, and the calf's offense is matched by present-day idols in families and churches such as pride and self-indulgence expressed in dress, speech, and conduct, with pleasure-seeking a special danger. Outward appearance reveals the heart's interests, while truth received in the heart transforms character.