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

Moses was on Mt. Sinai for a long time talking with God and receiving God’s commands for the Israelite people.  This led the people to become discontent with sitting there at the base of Mt. Sinai and start to complain about why they weren’t travelling towards the “land of milk and honey” they had been promised.  Some of the people around Aaron told him that he needed to do something to maintain control, and probably suggested that he needed to make an idol to be the god of the Israelites.  So, that is what Aaron did.  It would also explain why Aaron did not lose his position as high priest for this affair.  After Aaron made the idol for the Israelites to follow as their god, they held a festival with sacrifices and other activities to celebrate their new god.  When Moses came down from the mountain the party was still going on, and the people, or, at least some of them, refused to stop partying.  So, Moses rallied the Levites to his side in order to restore order in the camp.  They had to kill 3,000 of the people in the camp before order was restored.

All of this happened because Aaron was not a strong leader.  He was in his position because he was a good public speaker (and Moses’ brother).  While there is much more to be learned from this passage, it illustrates the danger of selecting leadership because they are great orators.

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

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

Usually I skip over the the first part of this passage and write something about Aaron, the golden calf, or Moses’ reaction to it, but this time I want to touch on something else first.  God tells Moses that no one may use a perfume which smells similar to the anointing oil for the priests and no one may burn an incense which smells similar to the holy incense, aside from priests doing so as part of the priestly duties.  I never really thought of the significance of that before today.  Over the last fifty years science has come to understand that smells trigger thoughts, memories, and emotions in ways which bypass our rational thought processes.  God gave this command regarding the holy anointing oil and the holy incense because He wanted those scents to only be associate with worship of Him.  Once those scents were used for worship within the Tabernacle, those who worshiped there would unconsciously associate them with the Holy.  If those scents were used in other settings two things could result.  On the one hand, if people only smelled those scents in places of genuine worship of God, those scents would help them focus more clearly on God when they smelled them.  On the other hand, people might be given a sense of righteousness while doing that which was sinful if those scents were present there.    What all of that made me realize is that we could use scents today to aid in our worship of God.

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

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

I want to note that when the people asked Aaron to make them gods for them to worship it had been less than two months after they had said, “We will do what the Lord has said.”  And one of the things they were agreeing to was to make no gods out of gold or silver.  However, I want to focus on the fact that Moses intervened with God for the sake of sinners.  It reminds me of when Abraham negotiated with God on how many righteous  people it would take for God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.   I think both of these instances represent behavior we should follow.  We should pray for God to have mercy on those whom we know have done things which have terrible consequences.  The Israelites did not deserve God’s mercy, but then, neither do we.  Let us petition God to have mercy on those we know do not deserve it.

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

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

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

There are some interesting points about the account of the golden calf and its aftermath.  First, Aaron and the people referred to it in the plural, even though there was only one calf.  Some scholars have suggested that the reference to the calf in the plural was a later addition to make sure people connected this incident with the calves which Jeroboam had made when he rebelled against King Rehoboam.  Personally I believe that they referred to it in the plural because they wanted to have a pantheon like the nations around them rather than just one God.

Second, the account tells us that Moses ground up the statue, mixed it with water, and made the people drink it before he calls the Levites to kill those who were committing idolatry.  There are several other aspects of the story which do not quite fit together.  To me it reads like the account was compiled from what several different people remembered.  The different people did not know where what they remembered fit in with what the others remembered.  So, the author of this stitched their stories together as best he could.  The camp would have been very large, so it would make sense that people only remembered portions of  what happened and did not know how they tied together with things which happened in other parts of the camp.  Another explanation for the way the account is constructed is possible. This also works logically because the camp was very large and people in one part would not have been fully aware of what was going on elsewhere.  This explanation goes like this: Moses ground up the calf and made those who had been celebrating and worshiping it near it drink it.  However, elsewhere in the camp were those celebrating and worshiping the calf who were unaware of what was going on there.  Moses sent the Levites to settle things down and they killed those who refused to give up their new “gods”.

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

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

There are a couple of points in the account about the Israelites and the gold calf which Aaron made for them which I don’t think I have ever seen anyone discuss.  A casual reading of the passage leads one to believe that all of the Israelites were involved in worshiping the gold calf, but a closer reading suggests otherwise.  The first hint that not all of the Israelites comes when Moses calls for people to join him and side with the Lord.  Now, if all of the people were taking part in the celebratory worship of the calf, why would Moses expect anyone to join him?  More importantly, after the Levites joined him, he told them to go through the camp and kill everyone, yet they only killed around 3,000.  Does that mean that only 3,000 of the Israelites were worshiping the golden calf?  No, probably not.  

It reads to me like a group of malcontents became convinced that everyone was looking for an alternative now that Moses had been gone for over a month, but in fact only a small portion of the population had given his extended absence any thought.  When Aaron declared the celebration many of those who were part of the original group and many others joined the celebration, but when Moses called for people to join him a lot of those sobered up and moved away from the celebration.  The 3,000 killed represents those who chose to oppose Moses reasserting his authority over the Israelites.  Another point worth examining is that the passage says that all of the Levites sided with Moses.  Yet, after the battle to re-establish Moses’ control, Moses told them that some of them had killed their own sons and brothers.  That tells me that either some members of the tribe of Levi did not side with Moses, or the “Levites” mentioned here were not necessarily members of the tribe of Levi, instead being those who sided with Moses whether they were descendants of Levi or not.  

Now that I have said all of that, what does this mean for us?  It tells us that it does not take a large number of people to start a larger group down the wrong path and, more importantly, it only takes a small number of people willing to stand up to them to get people to come to their senses.  It may seem like everyone is doing wrong, like their is no point in standing up for what is right.  But, you will usually find that if you stand up and say, “Wait, that is wrong,” more people will side with what is right than you expect…and fewer people will stand with the wrong than you thought.