"When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, 'Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.' So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry." (Exodus 32:5-6) Aaron is trying to redeem the situation but nothing good ever comes from blending idolatry with true worship. As the Apostle Paul once asked, "What fellowship can light have with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14) On top of that, Aaron is not successful in taking the people's focus off the calf and putting it back onto the Lord, for the author of Psalm 106 clearly states that they "forgot" the Lord: "At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea." (Psalm 106:19-22) They forsook the Lord in favor of this idol. They pushed away the holy, living God in favor of bowing down before an object made by the hands of man.
Why did Aaron choose the image of a calf? Or did the people specifically ask for a calf when they demanded he make them an image? Scholars have not been able to come to any definite conclusion. In the land of Egypt two pagan deities had a bovine form: the female goddess Hathor and the male god Apis, so the inspiration for an idol in the shape of a calf could have come from the Israelites' sojourn in Egypt. Or perhaps they picked up the idea from the Canaanites who had a bull god named El in their pantheon of gods. Some scholars suggest that the inspiration came from much further back, from the gods Abraham's ancestors worshiped in Ur of the Chaldees. There is really no clear answer to why a calf was chosen. For all we know, this was simply the easiest shape for Aaron to make. The Israelites owned plenty of cattle and Aaron may have used one of the calves as a model. It's interesting to speculate on the origin of the calf but the main issue at hand is the people's rejection of the Lord who has brought them this far.
When the Bible says the people ate and drank and then "got up to indulge in revelry" we can safely assume that this was a gluttonous drunken feast followed by sexual immorality. They weren't simply singing, dancing, and making music after they completed their feast; they were indulging in sexual sins according to the Apostle Paul who said that 23,000 of them committed adultery on the day of their feast. (1 Corinthians 10:7-8) This adultery may have had a pagan religious connotation, considering that so many other cultures engaged in fertility rites during their festivals. Not only have they bowed down and worshiped a false god, they've made sacrifices and offerings to it and now they're blatantly breaking one of the ten commandments by breaking their holy marriage vows. Although the people haven't yet received the tablets containing the ten commandments, they were already provided an oral list of the ten commandments in Exodus 20. They can't claim ignorance of the Lord's commandments. They know what they're doing is wrong in the Lord's eyes.
Moses is still on the mountain with the Lord but his time there is about to come to an end when the Lord informs him of the chaos in the camp. "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and have sacrificed to it and have said, 'These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.'" (Exodus 32:7-8)
The people have distanced themselves from God and in the Lord's words we see He's distancing Himself from the people. In speaking with Moses He refers to the Israelites as "your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt". In this moment the Lord isn't even claiming them as His own, and although He is the one who rescued them from slavery and brought them out of Egypt, He speaks only of Moses' role. The people want nothing to do with God right now and they are the ones who have created the distance between themselves and their Maker. The Bible instructs us: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." (James 4:8) But it's also possible to push God away. When we deliberately distance ourselves from God we are causing Him to have to distance Himself from us because God is a gentleman; He does not force Himself in where He is not wanted. Here in Exodus 32 the Lord is not welcome in the camp of Israel. The people have denied His name and in this moment He can't bring Himself to claim them as His own, considering how far and how quickly and how shockingly they've fallen out of fellowship with Him.
The Lord would be within His rights to wipe these people from the face of the earth and He makes this clear to Moses. "'I have seen these people,' the Lord said to Moses, 'and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave Me alone so that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.'" (Exodus 32:9-10) The Lord could have destroyed everyone in the camp and still kept His covenant promise to Abraham to make a great nation from his descendants. Moses is a descendant of Abraham and the Lord could have fulfilled His promise to Abraham through Moses' family line. The Lord isn't contemplating breaking a promise when He contemplates being done with the people who have broken faith with Him.
It's interesting to note that the Lord implores Moses to "leave Me alone" so He can destroy the people. I think Moses becomes very distraught when informed of the sin of his people and that he dissolves into panic and tears when the Lord makes known His desire to be done with a people who are done with Him. I think Moses is on his knees, hands upraised to God, while imploring Him to turn away His wrath. Here we see the immense value of intercessory prayer. God has the right to destroy the people. God's first instinct in the face of such ugly sin and idolatry is to destroy the people. But His hand is stayed by the intercessory prayer of Moses, as the author of Psalm 106 tells us: "So He said He would destroy them---had not Moses, His chosen one, stood in the breach before Him to keep His wrath from destroying them." (Psalm 106:23)
Did the Lord not know what the people were going to do? Did the Lord really intend to destroy them if Moses had not begged for His mercy upon them? I believe the Lord knew all along what the people were going to do. I believe He had a holy and righteous desire to judge their sin by removing them from this life. But at the same time I believe He always knew He wouldn't wipe all the Israelites from the earth because He always knew Moses would intercede for them and that He would accept Moses' prayers on their behalf. The Lord chose wisely when He chose Moses to be the mediator of the first covenant, for Moses is a man who begged passionately for mercy upon the people due to his love for them. He bridged the enormous gap between man and God with His intercessory prayer. Isn't this what the mediator of the new covenant did? Didn't Christ intercede passionately for mankind because of His love for us? Didn't Christ bridge the gap between man and God? Unlike Moses, who could only bridge the gap with prayer, Christ bridged the gap with His own body on the cross, saying in effect, "Take Me! Don't take their lives, Lord. Don't let them be lost and undone. Let Me make an offering capable of imputing righteousness to them forever. Place all their sins on Me and let Me bear their penalty." If Moses had not bridged the gap between man and God through his fervent pleas for mercy, God may well have wiped the people out, but God purposely chose a man who would plead for the people. In this same way, if Christ had not bridged the gap between man and God through the sacrifice of Himself, God may well have condemned the human race, but before God ever created man He had already formed a plan of salvation in which Christ would offer Himself in man's place.
This is a great mystery: how God's perfect will for man and how God's permissive will for man work together so that His plans for man are always carried out to perfection. God knew man would sin, God knew He would be compelled by His righteousness to judge man for sin, but He also made it possible for man to escape His wrath through an intercessor. Moses is the Old Testament intercessor who turned God's wrath away from the people. Many others will follow Moses' example, such as prophets and kings and priests, and will come to the Lord on bended knees on behalf of Israel. At last Christ will come and make the intercession which is perfect and eternal. And we are so fortunate to be living in this age of grace---in an age when Christ has already come and carried out God's plan of salvation on our behalf. When He was nailed to the cross and raised up between the earth and heaven, He forever bridged the gap between man and God. No one who puts their faith in Christ will ever be turned away by God the Father. It's as if Christ took the hand of man in one of His hands and the hand of God in His other hand and put the hand of man in the hand of God. If we know Christ as our Savior, we have fellowship with God, and this is a relationship that can't be broken by anyone or anything.
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