When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. (New International Version)

The ancient Israelites were dramatically delivered from slavery through a series of plagues on Egypt. Then, their lives were saved when God parted the Red Sea and the people fled from the advancing Egyptian army; collapsing the water on the soldiers when they tried to pursue the people.

The Israelites were led to Mount Sinai where God graciously entered into covenant with them; and gave them the law and the commandments. Yet, between receiving the covenant, and waiting for Moses to return from the mountain, the Israelites fell into chaos and a failure of faith. So, how did the relationship between God and Israel go so awfully sideways?

Moses spent a great amount of time with God on Mount Sinai. Apparently, the people believed that the forty days and forty nights on the mountain was too long and assumed that Moses would not return. So, what followed was idolatry, near annihilation, and intercession.

A failure of leadership

Aaron was left to lead the people during Moses’ absence. It didn’t take long for the people to get unruly and start working on Aaron. They asked him to make gods who will go before them, just as Yahweh and Moses had done in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

For whatever reason, Aaron complied with their request. Maybe the people pestered him to death with constant bickering and asking, and he eventually gave-in to their coercion. Perhaps Aaron thought they had a point, and went with it as a willing participant. We aren’t told why. We are told that Aaron ordered the people to remove all the gold earrings they were wearing and bring them to him.

Aaron took all the gold he received and fashioned it into the form of a calf. Again, we aren’t told why Aaron chose to make a golden calf, in particular. Maybe he was forging a false god altogether in the shape of one of the Egyptian gods. After all, there had been a significant “back to Egypt” movement earlier, when circumstances got tough without food or water in the desert. Or perhaps Aaron was making a false image of the one true God. Either way you look at it, it’s not good.

The golden calf was handed to the people and proclaimed as the gods who brought them out of Egypt. If that weren’t bad enough, Aaron made the situation even worse by building an altar for the calf and declaring a feast for the next day. So, it’s no surprise to us as readers when we see poor leadership decision-making that leads to the people getting way out-of-hand in their festivities through drunkenness and sexual immorality.

The consequences of poor leadership

All of the revelry got God’s attention. The Lord saw the people’s depravity and commanded Moses to get back down the mountain, at once. God’s tone of voice and choice of pronouns took a turn. The Lord said to Moses, “Your people have acted perversely,” effectively distancing the divine from the mass of humanity at the foot of the mountain.

God was so upset that he started planning to destroy the whole lot of them and completely start over through the descendants of Moses. Yet, even though the Lord was very angry, and rightly so, Moses stepped in and interceded on the people’s behalf. Moses appealed to God’s reputation rather than God’s compassion. In an interesting twist, Moses turned the responsibility for the Israelites back onto God by saying they are your people, the ones whom you brought out of the land of Egypt.

What’s more, Moses pointed out to God that the Egyptians would question God’s motives for bringing the Israelites into the desert. And then Moses appealed to God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) to make a great nation of their descendants to dwell forever in the land God promised them. Moses actually persuaded the God of the universe to set aside divine anger and let the people live.

The people forgot who rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Regardless whether or not they had good intentions, the people failed in keeping their covenant obligations to God and sought to substitute God’s physical absence with a false image of God.

The implications of leadership for us

Today’s Old Testament story raises many questions for us. Here are just a few to ponder:

• Which golden calves in our culture today draw our loyalty and love away from God when we get impatient with waiting for God’s timetable? Maybe our grumbling and complaining is a telltale sign that we are not content with God and what God is doing among us – and that we are fashioning (or have already fashioned) a god of our own making in the form of financial budgets, church buildings, or dogmatic theologies.
• How have we made the God whom we worship into an idol that we try to control and manipulate for our own purposes? Perhaps we have substituted the one true God who is free, untamed, mysterious, and surprising, for a puny humanly constructed image, ideology, institution, or idol.
• How do we maintain the balance between divine judgment with its consequences for disobedience, alongside God’s mercy, forgiveness, and faithfulness to the people? It could be, we are being led to grace, no matter how we go about answering the question.

Faithful God, you preside over an unfaithful people. Just as the people of Israel doubted your power and turned to other gods to fulfill their needs, we too, turn to other gods, seeking acceptance, power, and independence. Show us how to live humbly and walk in your ways, through the One who offered true power to all humanity, Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Amen.