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9. The Golden Calf

¹ Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. ² The people are strong and tall—Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?” ³ But be assured today that the LORD your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you.

⁴ After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you. ⁵ It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ⁶ Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.

The Golden Calf

⁷ Remember this and never forget how you aroused the anger of the LORD your God in the wilderness. From the day you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the LORD. ⁸ At Horeb you aroused the LORD’s wrath so that he was angry enough to destroy you. ⁹ When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water. ¹⁰ The LORD gave me two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the LORD proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.

¹¹ At the end of the forty days and forty nights, the LORD gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the LORD told me, “Go down from here at once, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt. They have turned away quickly from what I commanded them and have made an idol for themselves.”

¹³ And the LORD said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed! ¹⁴ Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.”

¹⁵ So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands. ¹⁶ When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. ¹⁷ So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then once again I fell prostrate before the LORD for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the LORD’s sight and so arousing his anger. ¹⁹ I feared the anger and wrath of the LORD, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the LORD listened to me. ²⁰ And the LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I prayed for Aaron too. ²¹ Also I took that sinful thing of yours, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain.

²² You also made the LORD angry at Taberah, at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah.

²³ And when the LORD sent you out from Kadesh Barnea, he said, “Go up and take possession of the land I have given you.” But you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You did not trust him or obey him. ²⁴ You have been rebellious against the LORD ever since I have known you.

²⁵ I lay prostrate before the LORD those forty days and forty nights because the LORD had said he would destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to the LORD and said, “Sovereign LORD, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. ²⁷ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Overlook the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness and their sin. ²⁸ Otherwise, the country from which you brought us will say, ‘Because the LORD was not able to take them into the land he had promised them, and because he hated them, he brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.’ ²⁹ But they are your people, your inheritance that you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.”

5. Not for thy righteousness. First of all, he would have the punishment inflicted upon these nations awaken the Israelites to fear, and thus that they should attribute nothing to themselves; because it was God’s design not to reward their merits, but to shew the severity of His judgment. Secondly, he confirms this by two arguments; viz., because God thus had performed what He promised Abraham; (which promise, as has been already seen, was founded on mere grace;) and, again, because the people itself was naturally perverse and rebellious. Hence, it sufficiently appears that there was no room for merits, since by them God’s covenant would have been nullified, nor, if there were, could any such be found in so depraved and contumacious a nation. And besides, God had made His covenant with Abraham almost four centuries before they were born. Hence it follows that this benefit proceeded from some other source. But he still further represses their pride, by reproaching them with being “stiff-necked;” for it would have been too absurd to imagine that God, whom they had not ceased to provoke with their sins, was under obligation to them, as if they had duly discharged their duty. This metaphor is taken from oxen, which are useless until they are accustomed to bend their necks; it is then the same as saying that they were not only unsubmissive, but that in their obstinacy they shook off the yoke. By his impressing on them, for the third time, that the Israelites had not deserved the land by their righteousness, we learn that nothing is more difficult than for men to strip themselves of their blind arrogance, whereby they detract some portion of the praise from God’s mercies. Now, if in regard to an earthly inheritance God so greatly exalts His mercy, what must we think of the heavenly inheritance?²⁵⁰²⁵⁰ L’heritage celeste, et permanent. — Fr. He would have it attributed to Himself alone, that the children of Israel possess the land of Canaan; how much less, then, will He tolerate the obtrusion of men’s merits in order to the acquisition of heaven? Nor is there anything in the pretense of the Papists that they attribute the first place to God’s bounty; because He claims altogether for Himself what they would share with Him. But if any object that this was only said to His ancient people, I reply, that we are no better than they. Let each retire into himself,²⁵¹²⁵¹ Pour se bien examiner. — Fr. and he will not excuse the hardness of his neck. But they who are regenerated by God’s Spirit, know that they are not naturally formed unto obedience; and thus that it is only mercy which makes them to differ from the worst of men.