While Moses was up on top of Mount Sinai talking with God, and Joshua was waiting for him on the mountain-side, the Israelites could see from their tent doors in the valley what seemed toward the sky, day and night, from the place where Moses was in the thick cloud. They knew this was a sign of God’s presence on the mountain.
But when the days passed by into weeks and still Moses did not return, the Israelites began to think he would never come back to them again. They grew restless. They soon forgot the great terror which filled their hearts when God’s voice thundered to them from the smoking mountain in words they understood. They seemed to forget even the words that God spoke. And then it was easy to act as though they had forgotten their promise to Moses, that they would obey the words of the Lord.
One day they came to Aaron and said, “We know something dreadful has happened to Moses, because he does not come back.” They complained because Moses had led them into the lonely wilderness and left them without a brave leader to take his place. Every day they grew more restless. Finally they planned to go on without Moses. So they came to Aaron and said, “Make us gods to go before us and show us the way.”
.Now Aaron was not a brave man. He feared the people. He remembered the time when they wanted to kill Moses because they could find no water, at Rephidim. Perhaps he thought they would throw stones at him and kill him if he refused to do as they asked. So he did not point them to the flame of fire which still leaped toward the sky from the mountain-top, where God was talking with Moses. He did not remind them of their promise to serve no other God except the One who spoke to them in a voice of thunder. Instead of bravely doing these things, he told them to bring their golden earrings, which the Egyptians had given them before they left Goshen. Then he took the gold that they brought and melted it carefully in a fire. When it was melted together, he shaped the mass of gold into the form of a calf, or a young ox, such as the Egyptians worshiped. “This calf he set up in the middle of the camp.
Then the Israelites made a great feast and began to worship the golden calf, just as they had seen their Egyptian neighbors worship oxen at their temples. This was very wicked. As they bowed themselves before the idol and sang and danced around it they broke two of the Ten Commandments which God had given them to obey. In the first command God had said, “Thou shalt serve no other gods”; and in the second command he had forbidden them to worship before anything they made, calling it a god. Now they were even crying out, “This is the god which brought us out of Egypt!” Nothing could have been more wicked.
And God saw the golden calf. He saw the Israelites bowing down and worshiping it. He heard them singing and dancing around it. And he was greatly displeased. He said to Moses, “The Israelites have sinned against me. They have broken their promise and made a god of gold. Now they are worshiping it, and crying, “This is the god which led us out of Egypt!’ Let me alone, Moses, and I will quickly destroy them all, for they are not fit to be called my people.” God promised to raise up another nation from the children of Moses to be his chosen people.
But Moses loved the Israelites even though they had sometimes been unkind to him. He did not want God to destroy them all. So he prayed earnestly for God to spare their lives even though they had sinned greatly. He believed they might yet learn to serve the true God. And because Moses prayed for them, the Lord did not destroy them as he had planned.
Then Moses hurried down the mountain-side with Joshua, carrying in his arms the two wonderful tablets of stone upon which God had written the words of the Ten Commandments. It was hard for Moses to believe the Israelites had sinned so greatly. But as they came nearer the valley Joshua said, “I hear the sound of war in the camp.” Then they saw the people dancing and shouting before the god Aaron made. Moses understood now why God wished to destroy the Israelites. The sight of their idol-worship filled him with great anger. He threw the wonderful tablets of stone upon the rocks at the foot of the moun-tain-path and broke them in pieces. Perhaps he thought, “What is the use of keeping these tablets when the people have already broken two of the great commandments God wrote upon them!” Then he rushed into the camp and tore the idol down before the people. He broke it in pieces and threw it into the fire, he ground it into fine dust and threw the dust into the water from which the people drank. This made the water taste very bitter indeed, but Moses compelled the people to drink it.
Moses’ sudden appearance in the camp broke up the merry feast. His anger quieted the people. But many of them were They wished to keep on worshiping the god Aaron had made. Then Moses called Aaron and asked, “What have these people done that you have brought this terrible sin upon them?”
And Aaron answered, “Do not be angry with me! You know these people, how their hearts are evil. And when they asked me to make a god for them to worship I told them to bring their golden ear-rings. I cast the earrings into the fire, and this calf came out!”
Moses was still angry. He cried to the people in a loud voice, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side, let him come and stand by me!” Then every man who belonged to the tribe of Levi left the Israelite host and stood by Moses. Then Moses told these brave men to take their swords and go through the camp and kill every person they found who still wanted to worship the golden calf. “Do not spare one of them,” he commanded. And the men killed three thousand people that day.
This was a sad time in Israel’s camp. But no one was quite so sad as Moses. He understood how terrible was the sin of his people and he feared that God might never forgive them. The next day he called them together and said, “You have done very wickedly, and in God’s sight your sin is very great. I will go up to him now and will make an offering for your sin. Perhaps he will forgive you.”
And Moses went before the Lord and offered himself to die with the people. But God said,’ “Those who have sinned against me must suffer for their own sins.”
Then God told Moses to cut two tablets out of stone like the ones he had broken, and bring them up on the Mount. And God wrote on those tablets the same words as he had written upon the others, and God talked with Moses again for forty days and forty nights on top of the mountain.