Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 32:20
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt [it] in the fire, and ground [it] to powder, and strewed [it] upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink [of it].
20. The people are made to drink their own sin.
burnt it with fire ] i.e. either (cf. on v. 4) burnt the wooden core, and ground the gold plating to powder by rolling large stones to and fro over it; or, if it were wholly of gold, reduced it by fire to shapeless lumps of metal, which were then ground to powder similarly.
strewed it upon the water ] Deu 9:21 says ‘and I cast the dust thereof into the wdy that descended out of the mount’ apparently to carry it away, without any mention of the Israelites being made to drink it.
to drink of it ] Cf. the curses to be drunk by the suspected wife, Num 5:24.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 20. He took the calf-and burnt – and ground it to powder, &c.] How truly contemptible must the object of their idolatry appear when they were obliged to drink their god, reduced to powder and strewed on the water! “But,” says an objector, “how could gold, the most ductile of all metals, and the most ponderous, be stamped into dust and strewed on water?” In De 9:21, this matter is fully explained. I took, says Moses, your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, that is, melted it down, probably into ingots, or gross plates, and stamped it, that is, beat into thin laminae, something like our gold leaf, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust, which might be very easily done by the action of the hands, when beat into thin plates or leaves, as the original words eccoth and dak imply. And I cast the dust thereof into the brook, and being thus lighter than the water, it would readily float, so that they could easily see, in this reduced and useless state, the idol to which they had been lately offering Divine honours, and from which they were vainly expecting protection and defense. No mode of argumentation could have served so forcibly to demonstrate the folly of their conduct, as this method pursued by Moses.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Ground it to powder; melted it either into one great mass, or rather into divers little fragments, which afterwards by a the or other instruments he, by the help of many others, might soon grind to powder, or dust of gold.
Strawed it upon the water; upon the brook which came out of the rock Horeb, Exo 17:6.
The children of Israel; not all, which would require a long time, but some in the name of the rest; and most probably either the chief promoters of this idolatrous design, or the chief rulers of the people, who should by their power and authority have restrained the people from this wickedness.
To drink of it; of the water into which that dust was cast; partly to make them ashamed of their madness in worshipping a god which now must be drunk, and cast out into the draught; and partly to fill them with terror and dreadful expectation of some ill effect or curse of God to come upon them, either by this draught, or by other means.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
20. he took the calf which they hadmade, and burnt it in the fire, c.It has been supposed thatthe gold was dissolved by natron or some chemical substance.But there is no mention of solubility here, or in De9:21 it was “burned in the fire,” to cast it intoingots of suitable size for the operations which follow”groundedto powder”; the powder of malleable metals can be ground so fineas to resemble dust from the wings of a moth or butterfly; and thesedust particles will float in water for hours, and in a running streamfor days. These operations of grinding were intended to show contemptfor such worthless gods, and the Israelites would be made to rememberthe humiliating lesson by the state of the water they had drunk for atime [NAPIER]. Othersthink that as the idolatrous festivals were usually ended with greatuse of sweet wine, the nauseous draught of the gold dust would be asevere punishment (compare 2Ki 23:6;2Ki 23:15; 2Ch 15:16;2Ch 34:7).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire,…. Melted it down into a mass of gold, whereby it lost its form, and had no more the appearance of a calf:
and ground it to powder; but how this was done is not easy to say, whether by beating the mass of gold into thin plates, and then filing them small; for this art has remained unknown; the chemists have boasted of it as only possessed of it; but it seems Moses, learned in all the learning of the Egyptians, had it: however, it is now certain by various experiments, that gold, though a very thick and heavy body, consists of parts which are separable from one another, and to be divided into infinite subtler parts: the famous Dr. Halley has shown that one grain of gold may be divided into 10,000 parts, and yet visible; and Dr. Keil has demonstrated that a cubic thumb’s breadth of gold is divisible into 47,619,047 parts, which do not escape the sight: according to the computation of the said Dr. Halley, leaf gold, with which silver threads are gilded, is not thicker than the 124,500 part of a thumb’s breadth; so that a cube of the hundredth part of a thumb’s breadth of the said subtle parts may contain 243,000,000 l:
and strawed it upon the water; of the brook that descended out of the mount, De 9:21 now called the fountain of St. Catharine; which Dr. Shaw m says, after it has supplied the demands of the convent (now built on this mount) is received without into a large basin, which running over, forms a little rill: and another traveller n speaks of a fountain about the middle of Mount Sinai, which, though small, was found in it running water very wholesome and refreshing: but if this was a brook of running water, it seems more likely that water was taken out of it and put into a proper vessel or vessels, on which the powder of the golden calf was strewed; or otherwise it would have been carried away with the stream, and could not have been taken up and given to the people to drink, as is next said; and this shows that it must be reduced to a very small light powder indeed, to float upon the top of the water and not sink to the bottom, as mere filings of gold would necessarily do:
and made the children of Israel drink of it; not the whole body of them, or every individual, but the more principal persons, and such who had been the most active in encouraging the making of the calf, and the worshipping of it: this was done not only that they might entirely lose their gold and have no manner of profit by it, but that the idol, which is nothing in the world, might be brought to nothing indeed, and that there might be no remains of it to be abused to superstitious uses, as well as to show them their folly in worshipping that which could not save itself; and by drinking it, whereby it passed through them and became an excrement, to express the utmost abhorrence and detestation of it; as also to show that they deserved the curse of God to enter into them, as oil into their bowels, as that water did, and be utterly destroyed: the Jewish writers, as Jarchi and Aben Ezra, suppose this water, with the powder of the golden calf in it, had the same effect and was for the same use as the water of jealousy, that it made the bellies of those that drank it to swell: and the Targum of Jonathan observes, that whoever gave any golden vessel towards the making of the calf, there was a sign appeared in his countenance: and Aben Ezra suggests the same, but neither of them say what it was: but an ancient Latin poet, quoted by Selden o, reports from the Hebrew writers, that whoever were guilty of this idolatry, as soon as they drank of the water their beards became yellow as gold, whereby the Levites knew who were guilty, and slew them; but as this is quite fabulous, so I have not met with it in any Jewish writer, only an author of theirs, of great antiquity and credit with them, says p, that whoever kissed the calf with his whole heart, his lips became golden.
l Vid. Scheuchzer. Physic. Sacr. vol. 2. p. 247. m Travels, p. 242. Ed. 2. n Baumgarten. peregrinatio, l. 1. c. 24. p. 61, 62. o De Diis Syris Syntagma, 1. c. 4. p. 156. p Pirke Eliezer, c. 45.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
He then proceeded to the destruction of the idol. “ He burned it in (with) fire, ” by which process the wooden centre was calcined, and the golden coating either entirely or partially melted; and what was left by the fire he ground till it was fine, or, as it is expressed in Deu 9:21, he beat it to pieces, grinding it well (i.e., crushing it with and between stones), till it was as fine as dust.
(Note: There is no necessity to refer to the process of calcining gold, either here or in connection with the destruction of the Asherah by Josiah (2Ki 23:4, 2Ki 23:12; 2Ch 34:4, 2Ch 34:7), apart altogether from the question, whether this chemical mode of reducing the precious metals was known at all to Moses and the Israelites.)
The dust, which consisted of particles of charcoal and gold, he then strewed upon the water, ” or, according to Deuteronomy, “threw it into the brook which flowed down from the mountain, and made the children of Israel drink,” i.e., compelled them to drink the dust that had been thrown in along with the water of the brook. The object of this was certainly not to make them ashamed, by showing them the worthlessness of their god, and humiliating them by such treatment as compelling them to swallow their own god (as Knobel supposes). It was intended rather to set forth in a visible manner both the sin and its consequences. The sin was poured as it were into their bowels along with the water, as a symbolical sign that they would have to bear it and atone for it, just as a woman who was suspected of adultery was obliged to drink the curse-water (Num 5:24).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
20. And he took the calf which they had made It might seem to be a cruel and inhuman punishment that Moses should in a manner infect the bowels of the people with the corruption of the crime. They had already polluted both their bodies and souls more than enough, without the contagion entering any deeper. Besides, he was thus likely to drive them to despair, when they bore within them the ground of their condemnation, as a woman nourishes her offspring in the womb. Nevertheless, such was the remedy to be applied to their senselessness; for, however they might have been terrified for a moment, the recollection of their crime and their fear of punishment would have immediately vanished had not this brand of their defilement been thoroughly impressed upon them. This, then, was a kind of tautcry, whereby they might feel that the disgrace of such foul idolatry not only cleaved to their skin, but was fixed deep in their very bowels. For thus also was their shame enforced upon them when they admitted the substance of their god into their belly, to be soon afterwards ejected with their excrements. Therefore were they compelled to drink and to void a part of their god, in order that their superstition might be the more offensive to them. Besides, if the ashes had been scattered on the ground, there was danger lest some of the more obstinate might collect the relics; and this evil was prevented when the gold, of which the false god was molten, was mixed with ordure. Finally, Moses is said to have made them drink of the accursed water, not because he himself held out the cup to each of them, but because the dust was cast into the stream of which they all drank; as is stated in Deu 9:21
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(20) He took the calf.To suppress the idolatry, the first step was to destroy the idol. Moses, who must have rallied to his side at once a certain number of the people, laid hold of the calf, and ordered its immediate destruction. He had it submitted to the action of fire, whereby its form was destroyed, and the material, as it would seem, calcined. This calcined material he reduced to a fine powder by rubbing or pounding, and then had the powder sprinkled on the surface of the stream which supplied the camp with water, that so the people might seem, at any rate, to swallow their own sin. Compare the action of Josiah (2Ki. 23:6; 2Ki. 23:12). No doubt, the process of destruction took some time. It is not meant that it was completed, but only that it was commenced, before Moses turned to other matters.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20. Took burnt ground strewed “We need not suppose that each incident is here placed in strict order of time . What is related in this verse must have occupied some time, and may have followed the rebuke of Aaron. Moses appears to have thrown the calf into the fire to destroy its form, and then to have pounded or filed the metal to powder, which he cast into the brook. Deu 9:21. He then made the Israelites drink of the water of the brook . The act was, of course, a symbolical one . The idol was brought to nothing, and the people were made to swallow their own sin . ” Comp . Mic 7:13-14. Speaker’s Commentary . In Deu 9:21, Moses says: “I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust . ” Compare the symbolical act of making the people drink of it with the drinking the water of jealousy prescribed for a woman suspected of adultery . Num 5:11-31.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
EXPOSITION
MOSES DESTROYS THE GOLDEN CALF. The first vengeance which Moses took was upon the idol. It was probably hollow, and possibly of no great size. He might easily break it to pieces and subject the pieces to the action of fire, whereby they would be calcined, and might then be easily reduced to powder. This powder he caused to be mixed with the stream of the brook that flowed from Sinai, so that the Israelites were obliged to swallow with their drink particles of their own idol. Compare the action of Josiah with respect to the “grove” set up in the temple precincts by Manasseh (2Ki 23:6), which was not identical, but still was similar. It has been suggested that this portion of the narrative is out of proper chronological order; and this may be so far true that the calcining and mixing with the water were at this point commanded rather than executed; but the destruction of the idol would naturally be the first thing which Moses would take in hand, and provide for, before proceeding to anything else. Only when the “abomination” was removed and. its destruction commenced, would he turn his attention to other points.
Exo 32:20
Burnt it and ground it to powder. Silver and gold subjected for a short time to a white heat, which may be easily produced by bellows, readily calcine, and are then easily crushed to a fine powder. Silver becomes detonating. I am not aware whether the case is the same with gold also. Strawed iti.e; “sprinkled it.” We need not suppose Moses to have done the wholeor even any parthimself. It was enough that he directed it to be done. The water. The article shows some particular water to be meant. We learn from Deuteronomy that it was the water of “the brook that descended out of the mount.” Made the children of Israel drink of it. The brook being the only water readily accessible, the Israelites, if they drank at all, were compelled to risk swallowing particles of their “god.”
HOMILETICS
Exo 32:20
Idolatry condemned by the idol’s weakness and nothingness.
An idol is “nothing in the world” (1Co 8:4)has no powercannot even save itself. Nothing convinces men of the vanity of idolatry so much as to see their idol destroyed We read in Bede that Northmnbria was converted chiefly through the priest Coifi running a tilt at the great idol of the day, and throwing it to the ground (Eccles. Hist. 2.13). Hence the command given “utterly to abolish idols” (Isa 2:18). And what is true of idols proper, is true also, in its measure, of all those substitutes for God which the bulk of men idolise. Riches readily make themselves wings, and vanish, leaving their worshipper a beggar. Wife, mistress, favourite child, lover, erected into an idol, is laid low by death, decays, and crumbles in the grave. Reputation, glory, sought and striven for throughout long years as the one sole good, fades suddenly away before the breath of slander or the caprice of fortune. And when they are gonewhen the bubble is burstmen feel how foolish was their adoration. Their idolatry stands self-condemned by their idol’s weakness and nothingness.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Exo 32:20. He took the calfand burnt it, &c. This perhaps might be rendered more properly he melted it down, and afterwards reduced it to powder. It is not probable that this calf was of any considerable size; the materials whereof it was made, as well as its speedy reduction to powder, whether by the file or whatever other means, would lead one to believe so. The idol, thus reduced to powder, Moses threw into the water, which flowed for them from the rock in Horeb: Deu 9:21 and which being the only water they had to drink of, they were led by a double act to see their folly, and adore Jehovah; while they drank that impotent idol, miserably reduced, in the very water which the Omnipotence of Jehovah had called forth for them from the rock. The authors of the Universal History observe, that “though nothing is more commonly received than the notion that gold cannot be destroyed, yet the Royal Academy at Paris have a burning-glass which will vitrify it in an instant, by evaporating all the sulphur of it, which crackles, and flies up in a thick smoke: while the glass that remains can never be reduced into any other form. That gold can be reduced into a fine powder, even gold-beaters can inform us; and who can tell but that Moses might have some particular secret for doing this which we know nothing of? By the help of a file, however, he might grate it into a dust as fine as flour which is ground in a mill.”
Note; When God’s honour is at stake, to be lukewarm is to be criminal. Filled with indignation, Moses beheld the shocking scene; and, though in his own concerns the meekest of men, now holy anger kindles in his bosom.
1. The sacred tables he dashes on the ground. Since they had thus forsaken God’s covenant, he would awaken in them a sense of the heinousness of their guilt. The blessings that God intended for them are lost, and they are left, as it were, open to every judgment which they had provoked. Observe; The greatest curse that can fall upon any people is the taking from them the word of God.
2. He seizes the hateful idol, plucks it from its throne in the midst of the astonished multitude, grinds it to powder, and, sprinkling the dust in the water, makes them drink it, to shew them the vanity of their wretched idol. Learn, The heart, which departs from God, drinks in iniquity like water; but in all its draughts of pleasurable sin, the curse, like this dust, mixes with it, and leaves a misery behind, which only they who taste it know.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Perhaps this was done to convince the children of Israel, how contemptible must be such gods which could be so reduced to nothing. 1Co 8:4 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Exo 32:20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt [it] in the fire, and ground [it] to powder, and strawed [it] upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink [of it].
Ver. 20. And he took the calf. ] We may all wish still as Ferus did, that we had some Moses to take away the evils of our times: Nam non unum tantum vitulum, sed multos habemus, We have not one, but many such calves.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
burnt. A secret known to the Egyptians.
water. Compare Deu 9:2. Deu 17:6.
children = sons.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
took the calf: How truly contemptible must the object of their idolatry appear, when they were obliged to drink their god, reduced to powder, and strewed on the water! Some have asked, how gold, the most ductile and ponderous of all metals, could have been stamped into dust, and strewed on the water. In Deu 9:21, this is fully explained. I took, says Moses, your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire; that is, melted it down, probably into ingots or gross plates, and stamped it, beat it into thin lamine, something like our gold leaf, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust, which might be very easily done by the action of the hands, when beat into thin plates or leaves as the original words ekkoth, and dak, imply. Deu 7:5, Deu 7:25, Deu 9:21, 2Ki 23:6, 2Ki 23:15
made the: Pro 1:31, Pro 14:14
Reciprocal: Gen 35:4 – hid them Exo 23:24 – overthrow Jdg 18:17 – the graven 1Ki 15:13 – and burnt 2Ki 11:18 – brake they 1Ch 14:12 – were burned 2Ch 15:16 – cut down 2Ch 34:4 – made dust Isa 37:19 – And have Act 17:16 – his spirit Act 19:19 – and burned
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Exo 32:20. He took the calf which they had made The people were evidently overawed by the presence of Moses, and therefore attempted no resistance while he took away their idol to destroy it. Here we see how much Moses excelled Aaron in courage and zeal for the glory of God, as also in authority among the people. He burned the calf Melted it down, and then filed it to dust. This speedy reduction of the calf to powder, as well as the materials whereof it was made, inclines one to believe that it was not of any considerable size. He strewed it upon the water Upon the brook which flowed for them from the rock in Horeb; and he made the children of Israel drink of it Not that he constrained them to it; but, having no other water to drink, they could not avoid, when thirsty, to drink of that with this mixture. Thus it would be taken notice of throughout the camp, and would appear to all who had the least discernment that an idol is nothing, this being reduced to atoms, and made as mere a nothing as could be.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
32:20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt [it] in the fire, and ground [it] to powder, and strawed [it] upon the water, and made the children of Israel {i} drink [of it].
(i) Partly to despise them for their idolatry, and partly so they would have no opportunity to remember the calf later.