Thematic Bible: Golden calf


Thematic Bible



When the people heard this sad word, they mourned, and none of them put on his ornaments.


And he took the gold from their hands, and fashioned it with an engraving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”


But Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why does Your wrath blaze hot against Your people, whom You have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, For evil He brought them forth, to slay them in the mountains and consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and change Your mind concerning this evil against Your people. [Earnestly] remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self and said to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever. read more.
Then the Lord turned from the evil which He had thought to do to His people.

So Moses returned to the Lord, and said, Oh, these people have sinned a great sin and have made themselves gods of gold! Yet now, if You will forgive their sin -- "and if not, blot me, I pray You, out of Your book which You have written! But the Lord said to Moses, Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him [not you] out of My book. read more.
But now go, lead the people to the place of which I have told you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I punish I will visit their sin upon them!

Then I fell down before the Lord as before, for forty days and forty nights; I neither ate food nor drank water, because of all the sin you had committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure which the Lord held against you, enough to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. And the Lord was very angry with Aaron, angry enough to have destroyed him, and I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. read more.
And I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I cast the dust of it into the brook that came down out of the mountain. At Taberah also and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath. Likewise when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you, then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and you did not believe Him or trust and rely on Him or obey His voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you. So I fell down and lay prostrate before the Lord forty days and nights because the Lord had said He would destroy you. And I prayed to the Lord, O Lord God, do not destroy Your people and Your heritage, whom You have redeemed through Your greatness, whom You have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember [earnestly] Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or at their sin, Lest the land from which You brought us out say, Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which He promised them, and because He hated them, He has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out by Your mighty power and by Your outstretched arm.

“And I stayed on the mountain, like the first time, forty days and nights, and the Lord listened to me at that time also; the Lord was not willing to destroy you.


Therefore He said He would destroy them,
[And He would have done so] had not Moses, His chosen one, stepped into the gap before Him,
To turn away His wrath from destroying them.


The Lord was very angry with Aaron, angry [enough] to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time.