Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 30-32.

When we read and talk about the Israelites making and worshiping the golden calf while Moses was on Mt Sinai we tend to either look at how God got angry and Moses argued against God destroying them, or we look at how Moses got so angry that he destroyed the stone tablets which God had inscribed.  I have never heard or read anyone who looked at the contrast between Moses’ reaction when God told him about it and his reaction when he witnessed it for himself.  When God proposed destroying the Israelites and building a people to fulfill His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from Moses’ descendants, Moses argues against doing so.  Then on the way down the mountain, when they first heard the sounds of the festival which Aaron had the people put on in worship of the calf, Joshua thought it sounded like the aftermath of a battle.  However, Moses immediately realized that it did not sound either like the celebration of a victory, nor did it sound like the grieving after a loss.  Then when Moses realized what was actually going on, he was furious.  It seems to me that perhaps God suggested to Moses that He would wipe out the Israelites so that Moses would come to their defense, which would temper his anger when he saw what they were actually doing a short time later.  It is worth noting that when Moses sent the Levites through the camp to kill, they only killed about three thousand men.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.