Moses—The Broken Vows

 

Most recently, in Moses—The Book of the Covenant, we spent some time discussing the judgments (in Exodus 21-23) that we weren’t able to cover in Episode #10, Moses—At the Marriage Mountain (Exodus 19-20, 24). In this episode, we will be jumping ahead to Exodus 32 where we will learn of Israel’s first act of unfaithfulness to her new Husband when, even after…

• • God’s intimidating appearance to the people at Mount Sinai;
  • His presentation of the Ten Commandments to them and His instructions on how they were to conduct themselves as the people of God; and,
  • Their promises of obedience…

…the Israelites broke every vow they had just made to God and the Covenant just made with Him.

 

Episode #11 of Act 1, Scene 3 of God’s One Big Story
Cast:     Narrator     God     Moses     Aaron   Joshua   The People

Setting the Scene: Immediately after Israel’s Marriage to God at Mount Sinai—and while Moses is away on the mountain receiving instructions from God for the construction of the Tabernacle—the people run amok and turn to the idolatry that was strictly forbidden in the covenant they had just sworn to uphold…

 

Narrator:  Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him…

People:  Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.

Aaron:  Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.

 

 

Narrator:  So all the people broke off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand, and he fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made a molded calf. Then they said…

People:  This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!

Narrator:  So when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said…

Aaron:  Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD. 

Narrator:  Then they rose early on the next day, offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. And the LORD said to Moses…

God:  Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’  

I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.

Narrator:   Then Moses pleaded with the LORD his God, and said…

Moses:  LORD, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. 

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ 

Narrator:  So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people. And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses…

Joshua:  There is a noise of war in the camp. 

Moses:  It is not the noise of the shout of victory, nor the noise of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing I hear.​

Narrator:  So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it. And Moses said to Aaron…

Moses:  What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?

Aaron:  Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.

Narrator:  Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained (for Aaron had not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said…

Moses:  Whoever is on the LORD’s side—come to me!

Narrator:  And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. And he said to them…

Moses:  Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’ 

Narrator:  So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day. Then Moses said…

Moses:  Consecrate yourselves today to the LORD, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.

Narrator:  Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people…

Moses:  You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.

Narrator: Then Moses returned to the LORD and said…

Moses:  Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.

God:  Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. Now therefore, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit for punishment, I will visit punishment upon them for their sin.

Narrator:  So the LORD plagued the people because of what they did with the calf which Aaron made.

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Our Review

Although we are not told exactly how long Moses had been gone at this point, it couldn’t have been very long. In Exodus 24:18, we were informed that he was up on the mountain for a total of forty days and forty nights. Since he would have come down on the fortieth day, and given that it would have taken Aaron a bit of time to construct the golden calf, he had probably been gone for about a month. So why did the people get so upset?

They couldn’t have been hungry because they were still being supplied with Manna every day, and they must have had a water source because later, when Moses scattered the pulverized idol, we are told that…

… he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it (v.20). 

Were they simply impatient and annoyed at having to wait, or fearful that they might have to make their way to the land of promise of their own? Perhaps they were just bored and wanted to see some more miracles. Whatever the motivation, their impatience set them squarely on a downward path that nearly resulted in their destruction as a nation.

— Come—a command to “get up!,” implying contempt and disrespect for both Moses and Aaron.

— This Moses, the man—did they think that Moses had failed them because he was human, so what they needed was a god to lead them instead?

— Make us gods—an indication that in spite of having been delivered physically from Egypt, their mindsets were still back in the land of their slavery.  Did they really believe that they could make a god—a god that would have less power than they did, and as such would be totally incapable of leading them anywhere?

— Break off the golden earrings—these earrings would have come from their “spoiling” of the Egyptians and were meant to be used in the construction of the tabernacle—the place where God would one day dwell with His people. But what should have been reserved for that holy purpose had become desecrated in their worship of a false god. Sadly, this was not the only time that Israel would prove to be an unfaithful wife to her Husband. In the years to come, her repeated spiritual adultery would become such a problem that it would eventually lead to her separation from God and her eviction from the home that He had graciously provided for her.

— Aaron received…fashioned…built—in spite of his excuses to the contrary later on, it is evident that Aaron was completely invested in this project. He not only received the gold from the people—without a word of protest, by the way—but he used great skill and took a considerable amount of time to fashion the idol. He then built an altar before it and decreed a feast for its worship.

— This is your god…that brought you out of the land of Egypt—the word used for god(s) here is Elohim—the same name used for God 2,346 times in the Bible. However, throughout the Old Testament, God was never associated with the bull. That was strictly a pagan image, with the Apis bull supposedly being the earthly manifestation of the Egyptian god Ptah and the cow a representation of the fertility god Hathor. Dennis Prager notes…

…as Nachmanides writes: ‘No one in the world could be so stupid as to think that the gold in their ears brought them out of Egypt.’ But coming from a pagan culture, one that revered the calf (sacred bull known as Apis or Hapis was an Egyptian god), they apparently did believe it. The ability of people to suspend reason in order to believe what they want to believe is limitless.[1]

— They rose early on the next day—and after eating and drinking, they “rose up to play.” While we are not told exactly what kind of “play” they engaged in, it must have been pretty bad for God to interrupt His meeting with Moses and send him back down to deal with the situation.

— Go, get down—God commands Moses to go back down the mountain…

 

 

— Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people—instead of taking God up on His offer, Moses responded by reminding Him…

…that it was He and not Moses who was the deliverer of Israel;
…that it was His Name and Honor among the nations that was at stake; and,
…of the promises that He had made to His servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to multiply their descendants and to give them the land as an inheritance. 

— So the Lord relented—in other words, He…

…softened in [His] feeling, temper, and determination…[1]

…to destroy Israel—a change of heart that can be directly attributed to Moses’ intervention.

Since God is not a man that He should lie, we have to believe that God meant it when He said that He would have destroyed the Israelites, if Moses hadn’t placed himself between the people and the judgment of God—and we can be sure that if He had, He would have been entirely just and righteous in doing so. That’s because the people had sinned and the Bible makes it clear that…

…the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23); and,
…the soul that sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:20.)

However, Scripture also makes it clear that because God takes…

…no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but [desires] that the wicked turn from his way and live (Ezekiel 33:11)…

…He has always…

…sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it (Ezekiel 22:30).

Not only did God find such a man in Moses, but He also found one in Abraham back in Genesis 18. That was when the Lord appeared to Abraham, warning him of Sodom and Gomorrah’s imminent destruction and giving him the opportunity to stand in the gap for his nephew, Lot, and any other righteous souls who might be living in those cities.

Of course, Moses and Abraham are but types of the supreme gap-stander and intercessor, our Lord Jesus Christ—Who, like Moses, willingly placed Himself between us and the judgment that we so rightly deserved as sinners and transgressors of God’s Laws..

— The two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand—as Moses headed back down the mountain, we are reminded of the preciousness of the tablets that he was carrying. Unlike other stone tablets of the day, these were written on both sides, with every word having been engraved by God Himself. These tablets were to be a tangible representation of the marriage covenant that God had made with Israel and, in keeping with the Jewish Wedding Tradition, they would have served as the Bride’s Ketubah, the legal document…

…outlining a husband’s obligations to his wife, ensuring her rights and protection in marriage and divorce situations.[2]

— And when Joshua heard the noise—while we tend to overlook Joshua’s involvement in this story, as Moses’ apprentice and heir apparent, his presence on the mountain with Moses was an important part of his training for the leadership role he would later take on. While we don’t know for sure exactly where he was on the mountain, he was there—enduring without food or water–for the same forty days and nights as Moses.

 

 

— As soon as he came near the camp—and saw what was really going on, Moses broke the tablets at the foot of the mountain—a sign of the broken covenant between God and Israel. He then burned the idol, ground it to powder, and made the people drink it. In doing so, he impressed upon the people the impotence of the god they had just been worshipping. He was also illustrating what they were to do to every one of the idols they would later encounter when as they moved into the promised land.

— So great a sin—after dealing with the people, Moses turned his attention to Aaron, who had been in charge during Moses’ absence, and asked how he could have let the people commit so great a sin? In Near Eastern marriage documents at the time, great sin was a legal term which always referred to adultery. But instead of confessing his sin and seeking forgiveness for it, Aaron first tried to blame everything on the evil nature of the people, and then on the miraculous appearance of the calf itself. Later in Deuteronomy 9: 20, when Moses was recounting this incident to the generation that was about to enter the promised land, we learn that…

…the LORD was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I [Moses] prayed for Aaron also at the same time.

— When Moses saw that the people were unrestrained—with everyone running amok, Moses stood at the entrance of the camp, drew the proverbial line in the sand, and called for the faithful to come out from among the wicked. In response, the descendants of Levi presented themselves. Then, in an effort to restore order to the camp, and in keeping with the law as stated in Exodus 22:20…

…He who sacrifices to any god, except to the LORD only, he shall be utterly destroyed…

…Moses directed the Levites to…

…pass through the whole camp—visit every part of it—and, where you see the licentious rites continuing, use your swords—do not spare, though the man be a brother, or a companion, or a neighbour—strike nevertheless, and bring the revel to an end.[3]

— Now it came to pass on the next day—with things having calmed down, Moses went before the people again and reminded them of the grievous nature of their sin and the gravity of their situation. For although God had spared them from His planned destruction, He still had not forgiven them. So, with their future as God’s People hanging in the balance, Moses announced…

…now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.

— Then Moses returned to the Lord—once there, Moses didn’t try to sugarcoat the sin of the people but instead pleaded with God for their forgiveness. He was so earnest in his petition that should forgiveness not be given, he asked that his name be blotted out of God’s book[4] along with the people’s.

— Whoever has sinned against Me—God then concluded this episode by…

• • Rejecting Moses’ offer, telling him that only the guilty would suffer that fate;
  • Directing Moses to lead the people to a new location;
  • Refusing to go before the people, instead entrusting that responsibility to His Angel; and,
  • Sending a plague to punish those who had participated in the evil rituals.

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In Summary

To help us put this episode into proper perspective, we need to view it within the context of the larger story of the Bible—which, in the Old Testament, is the love story between God and Israel. Having “betrothed” Israel to Himself back in Genesis 15, God waited patiently for over four hundred years for her to grow to maturity so He could redeem her and make her His wife. When that time had finally arrived, and working through His Best Man, Moses, God miraculously delivered His Beloved from her life of slavery in Egypt and then whisked her away to Mount Sinai where they were wed in a spectacular ceremony.

Sadly, before the “ink was even dry on their marriage license,” and while the Best Man was away, meeting with the Bridegroom and getting the plans for the construction of their new home, the Bride was caught cheating on her new Husband! We get some sense of the pain of betrayal that He felt when years later, He had this to say to her about her treacherous treatment of Him…

Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine…

I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, and a chain on your neck. And I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver…But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot…

You have also taken your beautiful jewelry from My gold and My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them. (Ezekiel 16: 8, 11-13, 15, 17)

What a sad end to what should have been a wonderful wedding! Although Israel’s future and her relationship with God is still unsettled at this point, we know that this is not the end to their story. So be sure to check back when you can to see where this love story goes from here.

 

Original images courtesy of Pixabay.com.

[1] Dennis Prager, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom (New York, New York: Regnery Faith, 2018), p. 436.
[2] Relent–Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 5th Digital Edition. Copyright © 2025 HarperCollins Publishers.
[3] Ketubah– https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/465168/jewish/What-Is-the-Ketubah.htm.
[4] The Pulpit Commentary. “Exodus 32.” In The Pulpit Commentaries. 1897. StudyLight.org. Cited 2 September 2026. Online: https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/tpc/exodus-32.html.
[5] The book containing the names of everyone who has ever lived.