061. Moses--Aaron's Calf
Moses--Aaron’s Calf
Exo 32:1-4. And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods which shall go before its; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what in become of him. And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden ear-rings which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden ear-rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving-tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods; O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. The real instances of human folly and extravagance far exceed the conceptions of the most lively imagination. All history, and every day’s experience, justify the mortifying account which the prophet gives of our corrupted nature--“The heart is deceitful above all thins, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”[*]Jer 17:9 The partiality of self-love, and the charity of a kind disposition, would at times lead us to form a more favorable judgment both of ourselves and of others, than we deserve. The form of sin, seen in its nakedness, is so hideous, that we shrink from it with horror: but use familiarizes the specter; and we are insensibly led to bear, to be, and to do that which once we abhorred. Could a prophet have foretold one half of the irregularities, the excesses, the enormities of our lives, we should have deemed the prediction a falsehood and an insult; and, with the resentment of conscious virtue, we should have been ready to exclaim in the words of Hazael, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing!” Yet alas! the event has woefully verified the cruel imputation; and exhibited the man fallen from his excellency, become the very monster he justly detested; the man sunk into an object of pity, of scorn, or of detestation to himself and mankind.
Many practices appear to us absurd and unnatural, merely because we are not accustomed to them. Herodotus relates, that Darius, king of Persia, having assembled the Greeks who were under his command, demanded of them what bribe they would take to induce them to eat the dead bodies of their parents, as the Indians did? Being answered that it was impossible for them ever to abandon themselves to so great inhumanity; the king, in the presence of the same Greeks, demand of some Indians what consideration would prevail with them to burn the dead bodies of their parents as the Greeks did? The Indians expressing the utmost horror, entreated the king to impose upon them any hardship rather than that. Among the Hottentots, the aged, so long as they are able to do an work,are treated with great tenderness and humanity; but when they can no longer crawl about, they are thrust out of the society, and put in a solitary hut, there to die of hunger or age, or to be devoured of wild beasts. If you expostulate with them upon the savageness of this custom, they are astonished you should reckon it inhuman: “Is it not much greater cruelty,” they ask, “to suffer persons to linger and languish out a miserable old age, and not put an end to their wretchedness, by putting an end to their days?”
Idolatry is one of those practices, to our apprehension, so foolish and unreasonable, that we wonder how it ever obtained footing in the world; and with difficulty are we brought to believe the avidity with which whole nations have given into it. The particular circumstances of the Israelites in the wilderness, render their idol worship peculiarly monstrous unaccountable. The chain of miracles which accompanied their deliverance from Egypt; that constant symbol of the divine presence which attended them, the pillar of fire and cloud; the daily miraculous supply of bread from heaven; the recent anathema pronounced against the worship of images from the dreadful glory of Mount Sinai; the scrupulous care employed, if we may use the expression, to exhibit no manner of similitude of the Deity in Horeb, to prevent the possibility of a pretence to use, themselves, or to transmit to posterity, any sensible representation of the invisible God; all these, superadded to the plainest dictates of common sense and reason, clothe with a blackness and malignity not to be expressed, the strange conduct which is the subject of this chapter.
Moses foreseeing the length of his absence in the mount, had wisely delegated his power to Aaron and Hur, that the operations of government and the administration of justice might suffer no interruption. God, the great God, was now vouchsafing to employ himself in prescribing a mode, and a ministry of worship for his Israel, which should possess all the pomp and splendor displayed by the nations in the service of their false gods, together with a sacredness and dignity peculiar to itself. He was preparing to gratify their very senses by external show, as their souls by heavenly wisdom. He was planning a tabernacle, establishing a priesthood, and appointing festivals and sacrifices, whose magnificence should leave them nothing to regret in the glory which they had seen in Egypt; and at that very time, they are employing themselves in devising and executing a plan of religious service, equally disrespectful to God and dishonorable to themselves. Their guilt begins in sinful impatience and presumption. In matters both of life and of religion men greatly err, when they take upon them to carve for themselves. “Vain men would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.”[*]Job 11:12 The transition is so sudden that it seems incredible. Not many days are past since they had given the most solemn, explicit, and unreserved consent to the whole of the divine law. “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.”[*]Exo 24:7 The treaty had been but just ratified by a covenant, a sacrifice, and a feast, with a solemnity not easily to be forgotten. The noise of the mighty thunderings has scarcely ceased; the ineffable glory of the God of Israel is yet present to their eyes; they have not well recovered from the terror inspired by that voice which made heaven and earth to tremble. Yet even thus circumstanced, as one man they fly to the appointment, not of a new leader and commander, though that had been ingratitude without a parallel, but with an impiety the most shocking and confounding, to the creation of new god. And the very first exercise of power which was committed unto Aaron for the public good, is to be the leader, the abettor, and an example, in practicing the abominations of that country from which they had been so happily delivered.
“And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.”[*]Exo 32:1 There is a sottishness, a madness, as well as a wickedness in certain vices, which, at first sight, we should deem inconsistent with each other. The irrationality of the brute, the frenzy of the lunatic, and the malignity of the demon, here discover themselves at once; and leave us perplexed which we are most to wonder at and deplore. What shall we say of the stupidity which talked of making gods, and of following that as a guide which itself could not move, but as it was carried? With what notes of indignation shall we mark our abhorrence of that base ingratitude which could speak contemptuously of such a benefactor as Moses; “This Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what has become of him?”[*]Exo 32:1 With what holy resentment must we execrate the spirit that could deal thus perfidiously, presumptuously with God?
After we have vented our anger and astonishment upon the conduct of these vile Israelites, let us pause and examine ourselves. Asserted by a strong hand and a stretched-out arm into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, have we never reverted in thought, in desire; in practice, into that very thralldom of sin from which the Son of God came to set us free? Lying under the weight of benefits much more precious, and bound by engagements equally solemn and explicit, have we never swerved from the path of duty, never lost sight of our vows, never failed in our obedience? With so much clearer and fuller discoveries of the being, nature, and will of the one living and true God, have we feared and loved him, and only him; have we never bowed the knee to mammon, never worshipped in the house of Rimmon, never kissed the image of Baal? Alas, alas! we hate and condemn some sins merely because they are not our own, while we stand chargeable in the sight of God and man, with equal or greater offences of a different kind; so blinded as not to perceive, so self-deluded as not to feel their enormity. Is it not amazing to observe on the part of Aaron no reluctance against this horrid proposal; to hear from his lips no remonstrance? Is it thug he discharges his sacred trust? Is this the man whom Jehovah was, in the meanwhile, designing to advance, and promoting to the dignity of the priesthood? Many things have been alleged in extenuation of his fault, though nothing can amount to a full vindication of his conduct. The conciseness of the sacred history, it has been said, may have suppressed some of the more favorable circumstances, and exhibited only a general view of the subject. Some of the Rabbis[*]InSchemoth Rabba, Sect. xli. fol. 156. pretend that his colleague in office, Hur, had lately been massacred in a popular commotion for daring to resist the prevailing frenzy; and that Aaron complied, through fear of similar treatment, after having thus deprecated the divine displeasure; “O Lord, I look up to thee, who knowest the hearts of men, and who dwellest in the heavens: Thou art witness that I act thus contrary to my own will. Lay it not to my charge.”
Others explain away great part of the criminality, both of Aaron and of the people, by alleging that all they demanded, and all he gave them, was an external object, where they might deposit the homage which they wished to render to the Supreme God; and thus they interpret the request of the people, “Make us a sensible object of divine worship, which may always be before our eyes, and supply the place of God, when we shall be told of all the wonders he wrought for us in Egypt.”[*]R. Juda, inLib. Cozri. Part 1. Sect. xcvii. fol. 47. And a learned prelate,[*]Patrick, Bishop of Ely, onExo 32:4, p. 635. of our own country labors to prove, that Aaron presented only a hieroglyphic of the strength and power of the Deity, and he produces a few passages from ancient authors to prove, that the ox was an emblem of royal and sovereign authority, and the horns, in particular, a common and well known emblem of strength. A fourth excuse has been pleaded in behalf of Aaron, founded on the letter of the sacred text. He feigned readiness to comply, according to these apologists,[*]August. Tom. IV. Quaest. xli. in Exod. page 118: and Theodoret, Tom. 1. in Exod. Quest. lxvi. page 3. in hope that the demand of the golden ornaments for the fabrication of the idol, acting upon their love of finery, or of wealth, might bring them to a stand, and break their resolution. But why set up an elaborate defence for a man who stands condemned by his own brother, who had the best means of information; and for one who himself had nothing, or worse than nothing, to produce in his own behalf, when charged by Moses with his fault?
These spoils of the Egyptians had not been obtained in the most honorable manner. Israel “borrowed and paid not again;” and it proves a dreadful snare to them. If they had not carried off the gold, they might perhaps have kept clear of the gods of Egypt. But ill-gotten wealth never was and never can be a blessing; and unwarrantable devices sooner or later come to entangle the feet of those who use them. Mark, how one rapacious domineering passion swallows up many others. “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?” And yet behold the daughters of Israel cheerfully sacrificing the darling embellishments of their persons to a mistaken principle of religion! If there be a passion more violent than another, it is the love of gold in the heart of a Hebrew; but we see one more violent than even that, the delirium of idolatrous superstition.
It is dangerous to have the patterns of evil before our eyes. We soon learn to bear with what we see frequently; we are insensibly led to approve what we have learned to suffer without being shocked; and what we heartily approve we are not far from adopting. Israel has sustained greater injuries in Egypt than we are at first aware of, and they have been more deeply hurt in their minds than in their persons. The stripes of an Egyptian taskmaster are healed by the lenient hand of time: but the wounds inflicted by the impure rites of Egyptian idols, are still festering at the heart, and threaten death.
Aaron is too eager and intent upon his shameful work, to escape, the suspicion of being hearty in it.. “And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving-tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”[*]Exo 32:4 All that industry, all that art could do, is employed to confer luster and value on this worthless object; and yet he would have it believed, when he is called to account, that the form and fashion of the idol was the effect of accident, not of design: “I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.”[*]Exo 32:24 What a pitiful figure does ingenious, industrious wickedness make, when it stands exposed, convicted, self-condemned! But the framing and erecting of this idol is not the whole extent of Aaron’s criminality. I am still more shocked at beholding an attempt to blend with its profane worship, the sacred day, the sacred ceremonies and services of the true God. “And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.”[*]Exo 32:5 What concord hath Christ with Belial? An attempt to form such an union as this, is more grossly insulting than even avowed neglect or opposition. It freezes the blood to observe a repetition of the same august ceremonies which were lately employed in the mount, for confirming the grand alliance between the great Jehovah and his people, in the settling of this strange league between Israel and a bauble of their own invention. “They rose up early,” as men intent upon their purpose; the altar is reared, the sacrifice is offered up, the peace-offering is provided, the feast of friendship is prepared and eaten. “They offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings: and the people sat down to eat, and to drink, and rose up to play.”[*]Exo 32:6 These last words are supposed by some commentators of note to be descriptive of a scene of extreme lewdness and debauchery. And certain it is, that one of the principal instruments of propagating and supporting idolatry, was the attraction of beauty and wantonness, vilely prostituted to decoy strangers into the homage of the impure and worthless deity of the place. That people must be in a dreadful state indeed, among whom religion, the foundation of good morals, the guard of virtue, is employed as a minister to unhallowed pleasure, and a handmaid to vice. The prevalence of evil practices is a lamentable thing, but the establishment of wrong principles is much worse. The most wholesome stream may be accidentally tainted and polluted, and work itself pure again; but if the fountain be poisonous, nothing but death can flow from it. “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”[*]Jas 1:15
We are now conveyed from this awful scene of pollution in the valley, to a much more awful scene of meditated vengeance on the mount. While Moses was solacing himself in the pleasing prospect of being soon dispatched to the people of his charge with messages of love; while he was rejoicing in the important transaction so lately past, confident that all was now settled between God and his people; the joy of this exalted communication is suddenly interrupted by intelligence of a new, unprovoked, and unexpected revolt. “And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down: for thy people which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These by thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.”[*]Exo 32:7-8 An offended God refuses any longer to acknowledge as his, a generation of wretches who had rendered themselves so entirely unworthy of his slightest regard. Justice awakes to a recapitulation of the benefits which they had received and the offences which they had committed, and concludes with a resolution totally to consume them. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” In the dialogue which passed upon this occasion, some of the most interesting objects that can be contemplated present themselves to our view. The condescension of divine friendship: As God would not “hide from Abraham the thing which he was about to do;” would take no step towards the destruction of Sodom till that friend of God had been fully heard in its behalf; and could do nothing till Lot was departed; so the same God, rich in mercy, will not arise to vengeance against Israel, till Moses has been consulted and has acquiesced in the sentence. O the wonderful power of faith and prayer! Moses is represented as possessing a constraining power over omnipotence, the anger of Jehovah refuses to burn till his permission is obtained. O the wonderful grace and condescension of the most high God! Thus is justice ever tempered with mercy: “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.”[*]Lam 3:22 A proposal is made to Moses, (and what is too hard for the Lord to perform?) which a selfish heart would eagerly have grasped at; “I will make of thee,” says God, “a great, nation.” But selfishness in this truly great man was controlled by much nobler and more generous principles; zeal for the honor of God, and compassion for a devoted people. The intercessory address of Moses is a masterpiece of eloquence, and discovers a soul superior to all regards, but such as are worthy of a prophet, a hero, a patriot, and what is superior to all, the friend of God. “And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt, with great power and with a mighty hand. Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.”[*]Exo 32:11-13 The holy man of God is concerned not only that the Judge of all the earth should do right, but that the divine conduct should stand vindicated in the eyes of the heathen. He proposes to himself the same end which Jehovah himself has in view in all that he does--the glory of his great name. He nobly prefers the fulfilling of the ancient covenant with his venerable ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the establishment of a new covenant with himself and his seed. He is willing to decrease, willing that his family continue obscure, that his head be laid low, provided the Lord be magnified, and Israel saved. This is a greatness of mind which alone could, inspire. Like a true son of Israel, he wrestles and makes supplication; and as a prince he too has power with and prevails, if, not to prevent every expression of displeasure, at least to prevent the execution of the general doom. Having obtained this great point, he descends with haste from the mount, bearing in his hand the most precious work of art that skill ever executed. Who does not shudder at the thought of its having been destroyed? “And Moses turned and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one side and on the other were they written. And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.”[*]Exo 32:15-16 But why should we regret that a piece of curious workmanship, in dumb matter, was destroyed? That loss soon might be and soon was repaired. Alas! we behold a more shocking, spectacle every day--a race of thoughtless wretches deliberately, presumptuously defacing God’s image, destroying his signature, engraved “not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tables of the heart;” inflicting on themselves a loss never to be repaired, not in a fit of holy zeal, but in a paroxysm of diabolical frenzy.
Moses might destroy the tablets, but the spirit of the writing he could not disannul. When all sensible monuments are dissolved, the law maintains its adamantine solidity, its uncontaminated purity, its unpliant steadiness, its unbending dignity. The tablets were written on both sides, within and without. Every fragment therefore had some part of the law and testimony written upon it. Thus, in every particle of the human frame, there are self-evident traces of the finger of God--the understanding, the heart, the conscience, the memory; shivers indeed, mutilated, defaced, but capable of being repaired and united. But I find it impossible to collect into one efficient point of view the sequel of this eventful history, within the limits of one discourse. Here therefore we set up another resting place, and from it take a cursory view of the ground over which we have travelled.
I. What a melancholy view presents itself, of the corruption, the degeneracy, and degradation of human nature. Behold a people lost to every-noble, generous, manly principle: restrained by no law, awed by no threatening, susceptible of no endearment, influenced by neither shame nor gratitude; boldly overleaping the bounds of reason and religion--and inthat people behold “the carnal mind, which is enmity against God: which is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Behold “the wickedness of man, how great it is in the earth; and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart how it is only evil continually.” Think not, however, O man, that thou art surveying a distant prospect, or travelling through a foreign land. Think not that these Israelites are sinners above all the men of the earth. When thou hast thoroughly searched and known thyself, no account of human frailty will appear exaggerated. They framed, and worshipped a golden image. How many myriads hourly bend the knee to the same idol, changed only a little in form! See the temple of mammon, how it is crowded. His votaries, see how much in earnest they are in their devotions: Early and late the incense ascends. Neither Jewish nor Christian sabbath interrupts their attendance or cools their ardor; while truth, and justice, and mercy, and the love of God are offered a perpetual sacrifice to the insatiate demon, who never says, “it is enough.” Nor think that gold is the only deity which men adore. On searching into thy own bosom, some lurking imp, of different form, complexion, and texture will be found; hid in close disguise, unknown indeed of men; but to the eye of God and conscience clearly confessed. Down with it; it is thy dishonor, and threatens thy ruin.
II. Rejoice with trembling, while you contemplate the affecting prospect which opens of the severity and mercy of the great God--the severity, which by the hand of Levi cut off three thousand of the offenders, in the heat of their offence; which threatened to exterminate the whole race, and which, in “the day of visitation, visited their sin upon them”--the mercy which relented, which pitied and spared the guilty, which listened to the voice of intercession, and accepted the atonement. Thou thyself, O sinner, art a monument of both the one and the other. Thy life is forfeited to justice; thou art daily enduring the punishment of thy transgressions; thou standest continually exposed to severer ills than any thou hast yet felt, and far beyond what fear itself can figure. Yet mercy suffers thee to live; there is hope concerning thee: the glad, tidings of salvation are in thine ears; “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world!” “Behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation!” “Wherefore, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor: it may be” more than “a lengthening of thy tranquillity,” it may prevent eternal misery.
III. Behold a greater than Moses is here--an Intercessor more compassionate, more earnest, more powerful: “A Prince with God” who ever prevails; a propitiation ever meritorious and successful; “blood that cleanseth from all sin.” “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins the whole world.”[*]1Jn 2:1-2 “Who in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared. Though he were a Son; yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered: and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all; them that obey him:”[*]Heb 4:7;Heb 4:9 “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every just transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto as by them that heard him?”[*]Heb 2:1-3
IV. Let us look forward to “that great and notable day of the Lord,” when the law which was delivered audibly from Sinai, which Moses with a rash is inconsiderate hand could break in pieces; but was unable to repair, shall be restored in all its purity and perfection; shall be engraved on every heart, and become legible to every eye: when the hidden glory of the legal dispensation shall be unveiled, and the greater glory of the gospel displayed: when the divine image shall be again impressed on the soul of man, in all its beauty and exactness--and, we ourselves, degraded and lost as we are, shall “be raised together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Jesus”--and “beholding with open face as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” “Beloved, now are we the sons, of God, and it doth not yet appear, what we shall be; but we know, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as, he is.”