Sensing the danger, Moses begins to plead for Israel. His prayer for the nation, all based on biblical facts, is so successful that the Lord changed His mind. We read from Ex. 32:14, So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people. This is when the Lord found rest in Moses’ prayer and said He would not wipe out all the people and form a new nation solely from Moses’ descendants, from the tribe of Levi. That is the good news, however as we see in the rest of the account, this did not mean that God simply wiped out the sin. We are again reminded that sin cannot just disappear; it needs to be paid for, and the question is: Who was going to pay for the sin?

Moses understood this and did his best to erase the judgment with a series of actions listed in this chapter, but he was unable to atone for it. He was, after all, just a man. What is of great significance is that the chapter ends with this sin hanging over the nation. Moses only succeeded in delaying the judgment, but he could not remove it.

We see what the Lord says at the end, in vs.34 of Exodus 32, But on the day of my calling to account, I will call them to account for their sin! This put a heavy but delayed sentence on Israel until that time of punishment would come.  Many of the ancient rabbis were disturbed by this, wondering when that time would be. Rashi, a well-known and respected medieval rabbi, gathered the sayings of many rabbis before him and concluded that any punishment that would fall upon the Israelites would include some form of chastisement related to the sin of the golden calf. They saw the consequences of this sin lingering throughout their history.

Another rabbi, Nahmanides saw the suffering of his people in the Diaspora and felt this was in some way related to the idolatry of the golden calf. And another keen commentator from that same period, Ibn Ezra understood that the day of the reckoning for this sin was related to the Day of the Lord, which are the days of the Tribulation. Many prophets referred to this as Jacob’s Trouble which would come just preceding the coming of the Messiah.

Judging from the grievous way the Bible treats the sin of the golden calf, we see that it was likened in intensity and consequence to the sin of the blasphemy against the Spirit. Both were a rejection of accepting the one true God of Israel, and this happened after so much was offered by way of miracles that had been poured out, along with so many blessings.

All this being said, we now return to that earlier question; who will pay for the sin of the golden calf? We have the answer, already given and seen throughout Exodus and the Hebrew Scriptures, especially understood through the blood of the Lamb, the continuous provision of the manna, as well as the delivery of water in the wilderness. Later in this section, we will also see one of the most powerful messianic types in Exodus. These things tell us that Yeshua the Messiah of Israel is the One Who paid the price because no mortal man could. When God delayed the judgment, He knew very well that no man could save the world, and Moses, the best the world could produce, tried but even he understood his limits. And so, the Lord Himself came down to save humanity.

Though He did find rest in Moses’ prayer, ultimately, He would be the One to pay for the sin. Let’s see how hard Moses tried to save his people. Through prayers and actions, he who knew how to touch God’s heart and who confessed inability to atone for the sins of the people, highly succeeded in pointing Israel to the Messiah.

The first thing that Moses did was something that no one expected. Exceptional circumstances often bring out unexpected actions. See Exodus 32:19, It came about, as soon as Moses came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and he threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.

At first glance, Moses took a big chance doing such a thing. Remember, these are the tablets of the law that he broke, written by the finger of God. And, as if to enhance the importance and holiness of these tablets, we are told just a couple of verses before, in vs.16 that the tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing engraved on the tablets.

Items more sacred and sanctified than these tablets would be hard to find, and here Moses broke them. The Hebrew word for God’s work, maaseh, is used to speak of God’s creation of the universe. This is the same word used for the tablets themselves and so these very items were put at par with His creation. This verse also reminds us that it was God Himself who wrote it, with the word writing being mentioned twice in the same verse. Wouldn’t you have been so careful to carry those tablets, and would you have ever thought to deliberately break them? Why then did Moses do that?

Let me first tell you that it was not because he lost his temper as many think. Moses himself explains why later in Deuteronomy 9:19 when he says, “For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time also”.

He was afraid that the Lord would respond by wiping them out as He said He wanted to do.

Should the Israelites have accepted the tablets because the tablets represented the final document of the Mosaic Covenant between Israel and God, then the judgment contained in there, would have been poured out against them. And this would include all the curses that were listed in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. There the Lord speaks of punishing Israel seven times more for her sins, and this is repeated four times in Leviticus 26. Rabbis have counted 147 curses in both these chapters, matching the number of years Jacob lived. He is the one whose name was changed to Israel.

Created Tablets of God

Click Here for the Teaching: Exodus Sermon 32: Who Paid for the Sin of the Golden Calf