The Wild Places - Day 7

Wednesday, March 20

Exodus 32:1-14 32 The people saw that Moses was taking a long time to come down from the mountain. They gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come on! Make us gods who can lead us. As for this man Moses who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t have a clue what has happened to him.” 2 Aaron said to them, “All right, take out the gold rings from the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took out the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. 4 He collected them and tied them up in a cloth. Then he made a metal image of a bull calf, and the people declared, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf. Then Aaron announced, “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord!” 6 They got up early the next day and offered up entirely burned offerings and brought well-being sacrifices. The people sat down to eat and drink and then got up to celebrate. 7 The Lord spoke to Moses: “Hurry up and go down! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, are ruining everything!8 They’ve already abandoned the path that I commanded. They have made a metal bull calf for themselves. They’ve bowed down to it and offered sacrifices to it and declared, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I’ve been watching these people, and I’ve seen how stubborn they are.10 Now leave me alone! Let my fury burn and devour them. Then I’ll make a great nation out of you.” 11 But Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, “Lord, why does your fury burn against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and amazing force? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He had an evil plan to take the people out and kill them in the mountains and so wipe them off the earth’? Calm down your fierce anger. Change your mind about doing terrible things to your own people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, whom you yourself promised, ‘I’ll make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky. And I’ve promised to give your descendants this whole land to possess for all time.’” 14 Then the Lord changed his mind about the terrible things he said he would do to his people.

Points of Interest

Just after we read of the commandment to not trade in the living, passionate god for dead, controllable idols, people do just that. Why the move to idol making when Moses has been missing? We get hints of fear, abandonment, loneliness, stress, and boredom – the conditions both then and now in which individuals and communities easily lose our path.The people want “gods who can lead us” and Aaron, their priest, makes a golden bull calf. This might represent the Egyptian calf idol Apis, associated with royal divinity. It might also be a nod to the region’s fertility gods – the need for harvests and children and the fear of drought or infertility being the great anxiety of ancient agricultural societies in arid areas. Perhaps it’s good for humans to reach for the living God in these anxieties, rather than avoid our fears through idols. Lest we put too much of a distance between our own times and these ancient religious practices, remember that the United States has our own actual golden bull idol – the popular New York City tourist attraction whose virility now represents wealth and fortune – the longing for abundance and the fear of scarcity being one of the great anxieties of our age. Perhaps it’s good for humans to reach for the living God in these anxieties, rather than avoid our fears through busy industry.In last week’s passages, Moses was regularly stressed and fed up with people, while God was a calming and loving presence.