Exodus 32:7 - Meaning and Application

Here, God tells Moses what was happening in the camp while he was away (Exodus 32:7, 8). He could have told him sooner, as soon as they began to sin, and sent him back to stop it. Instead, God allowed the sin to grow to this point for wise and holy reasons, and then sent Moses down to deal with it. It is no shame to God’s holiness that he allows sin, since he knows how to restrain it when he chooses, and how to turn even sin toward his own glory.

Notice what God says about this sin. First, “they have corrupted themselves.” Sin is the ruin and twisting of the sinner, and it is a self-caused ruin. Each person is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire. Second, “they have turned aside out of the way.” Sin is a turning from the path of duty into a side road. They had promised to do all that God commanded, and they had started well, but now they had lost their way.

Third, they had turned aside quickly, very soon after the law was given and they had promised obedience. They had also turned soon after God had shown them such great kindness and promised even greater blessings. They forgot his works quickly. It is especially serious to fall into sin soon after we renew our promises to God, or after we receive special mercy from him. Fourth, God says plainly what they had done: “They have made a calf and worshiped it.” What people hide from human rulers is fully open before God. He sees what others cannot discover, and no evil in the world is hidden from him.

Fifth, God speaks as if he were setting them aside: “They are your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt.” It is as though he were saying, “I will not claim them as mine, or have anything to do with them.” Those who ruin themselves by sin not only shame themselves, they make God’s kindness toward them look disgraceful in human eyes. Sixth, God sends Moses back at once: “Go, get down.” Moses must leave even his close fellowship with God in order to do his duty among the people, just as Joshua later had to do (Joshua 7:10). Everything is beautiful when it happens at the right time.

God also shows his anger against Israel and his justice in saying he will destroy them (Exodus 32:9, 10). He gives their true character: they are a stiff-necked people, unwilling to submit to God’s law. They are ruled, as it were, by a spirit of resistance, set against what is good and inclined to what is evil. The righteous God sees not only what we do, but what we are. He looks at the bent of the heart as well as the actions of life, and he deals with us with that in view.

God then declares what they deserve, that his anger should burn against them and consume them at once, and erase their name from under heaven (Deuteronomy 9:14). That would mean not only casting them out of covenant, but removing them from the world. Sin exposes us to the anger of God, and if mercy does not turn that anger aside, it will burn us up like dry straw. It would be just for God to let the law run its full course against sinners and cut them off in the act of sin.

God also says, “Leave me alone,” to keep Moses from interceding. Moses could not stop God if God had fully decided to destroy them. When God has determined to abandon a people, no prayer can prevent it (Ezekiel 14:14; Jeremiah 15:1). Yet God speaks this way to show the greatness of his displeasure, and in a human way, as people do when they refuse to hear any plea for those they mean to punish. He also gives honor to prayer, showing that only Moses’ intercession could save them from ruin. In that way, Moses became a type of Christ, through whose mediation alone God would reconcile the world to himself.

To make Moses’ intercession stand out, God also offers to make a great nation from Moses himself if he does not plead for Israel. God could raise up such a nation from Moses’ descendants later, or he could raise up another great nation under Moses’ leadership. In either case, Moses would not lose out by Israel’s destruction. If Moses had been selfish, he might have accepted that offer. Instead, he values the salvation of Israel above the rise of his own family. This shows the kind of man fit to govern others.

Then Moses earnestly pleads with God for the people (Exodus 32:11-13). He begged the Lord his God. If God would not be called the God of Israel for a time, Moses still hoped to speak to him as his own God. Whatever access we have to God’s throne of grace, we should use it for the church and for our friends. Moses was standing in the gap to turn away God’s wrath (Psalm 106:23). He took the hint in God’s words, “Leave me alone.” Though that sounded like a warning, it was really an encouragement, showing how powerful the prayer of faith is with God. When there is no intercessor, God himself wonders at the lack of one (Isaiah 59:16).

Moses prays, “Turn from your fierce anger” (Exodus 32:12). He does not deny that God is rightly angry. He asks only that God would not be so angry as to destroy them. In effect, he asks that mercy would prevail over judgment, and that the sentence of destruction would be changed into discipline. Moses then gives several reasons, not to force God, but to show his own faith and to stir up his own earnestness in prayer.

He first appeals to God’s interest in the people and to all the great things God has already done for them (Exodus 32:11). God had said, “They are your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:7), but Moses humbly gives them back to God: “They are your people. You are their Lord and owner. I am only your servant. You brought them out of Egypt, and I was only the tool in your hand.” All of that was done for their rescue, and only God could do it. Though they were his people, and that made their sin more serious, it was also a reason not to destroy them completely. A father may rightly correct his son, but it is unnatural for a father to kill his son. The fact that God had shown them such kindness before was also a strong argument: “You brought them out of Egypt, even though they were unworthy, and had there served the gods of the Egyptians” (Joshua 24:15).

If God had done that for them, even though they sinned in Egypt, would he now undo it because they have sinned in the same way in the wilderness?

Moses also pleaded for God’s glory (Exodus 32:12): “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He brought them out for evil’?” Israel was dear to Moses as his own people and as the people under his care, but God’s honor was even more important to him. Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the glory of God. If Israel could perish without bringing shame on God’s name, Moses could have accepted it. But he could not bear to hear God spoken against, so he pressed this point: “Lord, what will the Egyptians say?”

The eyes of the Egyptians, and of the nearby nations, were fixed on Israel. From the amazing way this people had begun, those nations had expected great things from their future. But if a people so wonderfully saved were suddenly destroyed, what would the world say? The Egyptians, who hated both Israel and Israel’s God, would say that God was either too weak to finish what he started or too changeable to do so. They would claim that he brought them out, not to sacrifice at the mountain, as had been said, but to be sacrificed there.

They would not think about Israel’s guilt to excuse God’s actions. Instead, they would take joy in saying that God and his people had fallen out, and that their own wishes had been fulfilled. So we should remember this: the honoring of God’s name, as it should be our first request in prayer, as it is in the Lord’s Prayer, should also be our great argument with God (Psalm 79:9; Jeremiah 14:21; Jeremiah 33:8-9). And if we want to use this with comfort as a reason God should not destroy us, then we must also use it with ourselves as a reason not to offend him: What will the Egyptians say? We should always be careful that God’s name and teaching are not insulted because of us.

Moses also pleaded God’s promise to the patriarchs, the early fathers of Israel, that he would multiply their descendants and give them the land of Canaan as their inheritance. That promise had been confirmed by an oath, an oath by God himself, since he could swear by no one greater (Exodus 32:13). God’s promises should be our arguments in prayer, because what he has promised he is able to do, and his honor is tied to keeping his word. In effect, Moses says, “Lord, if Israel is cut off, what will happen to the promise? Will their unbelief make your promise worthless? God forbid.” In prayer, we must draw our hope from God alone.

Then God kindly softened the severity of the sentence and relented from the harm he had planned to do (Exodus 32:14). Though he intended to punish them, he would not destroy them. Here we see the power of prayer. God allows humble, believing, urgent prayer to move him. We also see God’s compassion toward poor sinners and how ready he is to forgive. He has given more proofs than his own oath that he takes no pleasure in the death of those who die. He not only forgives when sinners repent, but he also delays judgment and gives time when others pray for them.