After giving Moses the inscribed tablets, God tells him to go down because his people had made themselves a golden idol cast in the shape of a calf, and were bowing down and sacrificing to it. God is not happy about it, and Moses is furious.
By way of backstory, this happens three months after God has led the 600,000 Israelites out of their 430 years of captivity in Egypt. These people witnessed the ten plagues brought down on Egypt which caused Pharoah to finally let them go, and then the parting of the Red Sea so they could escape when Pharoah’s army was sent to recaptue them after Pharoah realized he had just let all his slave labor go, and then manna from heaven God sent to nourish them during their journey. In short, they had witnessed amazing displays of God’s power on their behalf, and yet they still made and bowed down to a golden calf. We are still the same today. No matter what blessings in life, gifts and miracles God showers us with, we still sin (miss the mark, become forgetful, not conscious) and turn to the golden calf of our choosing.
Exodus 32:15-20
Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”
Moses replied: “It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear.”
When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.
(Note: The earliest recorded use of gold for medicinal and healing purposes come from Alexandria, Egypt. Over 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians ingested gold for mental, bodily and spiritual purification. The ancients believed that gold in the body worked by stimulating the life force and raising the level of vibration on all levels. Moses and the Israelites had recently come out of a long stint in Egypt, so his making the wayward Israelites drink the gold makes sense under the circumstances.)
E.J. Lefavour
Good Morning Gloucester 