Key Verses: Exodus 32

Key Questions


1. Why do the people make a calf? What does this say about how fear and impatience can cause us to recreate false security from our past, even if it enslaved us?
2. Why does Moses break the tablets? Does this act serve as protest, lament, or judgment?
3. How do we wrestle with the Levites’ violence in the name of loyalty to God? Where is the line between righteous indignation and spiritual extremism?
4. What does it mean that Moses offers to be erased for the people’s sake? How does this point to sacrificial love as the core of godly leadership?
5. What idols do modern people make—not golden calves, but other symbols of safety, power, or control? How does true worship challenge those attachments?

Theological Insights


“Hebrew ‘egel is a young ox or bull… Throughout the Near East the bull was a symbol of lordship, leadership, strength, vital energy, and fertility. As such, it was either deified and worshipped or employed in representation of divinity. Often the bull or some other animal served as a pedestal on which the gods stood… Aaron seems to have followed contemporary artistic convention. The young bull would have been the pedestal upon which the invisible god of Israel was popularly believed to be standing. His presence would be left to human imagination.” Sarna, Exodus, 203.

“Lord of the universe, I want to propose a deal. We have many sins. You have much forgiveness. Let us exchange our sins for Your forgiveness. And if You should say that this is not a fair exchange, then my reply is: If we had no sins, what would You do with Your forgiveness?” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev in Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire, 108.

“Moses’s instruction to the Levite volunteers is chilling. He puts the death-dealing words, which are surely of his own devising, into the mouth of ‘the Lord, the God of Israel.’ In God’s name, he orders them to engage in wholesale (and, it seems, random) slaughter throughout the camp… When specifying whom to slay, he does not speak about the guilty but about brothers, companions, neighbors. He orders every Levite to practice fratricide… the plain text makes it appear that the killings by the Levites are less a matter of justice and more a matter of cleansing and purgation—requiring sacrificial victims as the necessary means of purification—and of frightening the many into obedience by making an example of the few.” Kass, Founding God’s Nation, 547-548.

“We do not know what God would have done if Moses had not entered into the discussion as he did. But the picture that finally emerges from this chapter is that Moses is responsible for shaping a future other than what would have been the case had he been passive and kept silent. This text lifts up the extraordinary importance of human speaking and acting in the shaping of the future. Simply to leave the future in the hands of God is something other than what God desires. Simply to leave the future in the hands of the people is not a divine desire either.” Fretheim, Exodus, 292.