Study Questions

Exodus 32:7-14

God just liberated the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt so they could worship the one, true God. “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me’” (Exodus 9:1).

In Exodus 20, God gave the people the Ten Commandments. The first commandments concern idolatry. And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Exodus 20:2-4).

Moses returned to Mount Sinai to hear God’s instructions for proper worship. After being gone for forty days, the Hebrews start to panic. Without a leader, they don’t know how to behave. They demand that Moses’ brother Aaron give them something to worship. Disregarding the Living God who rescued them from slavery; ignoring the Ten Commandments that God gave them, the Hebrews fashioned a golden calf. God was not happy with his people.

7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 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.’ (Exodus 32:7-8)

God commands Moses to leave the mountain and take control of the Hebrew people. Notice that God calls the Hebrews “your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt”?

Have you ever spoken to your spouse in this way? “Your son just broke a window!” “Your daughter is flunking French?” We seldom do this when our children have just accomplished something great. Who says, “Your son hit a home run! “Your daughter was accepted to Harvard!” God is telling Moses to take responsibility for their joint responsibility for the people of God. The Almighty is so frustrated with his children that he doesn’t even want to acknowledge them in today’s passage.

The golden calf was a frequent idol in the Near East. The Hebrews may not have been simply worshipping it. They may have treated it as God’s steed, a golden beast for God to ride on. Still, the dazzling gold distracted them from true worship. They engaged in perverse worship, suggesting that they behaved sexually inappropriately. Clearly, they broke God’s laws against idolatry.

1. What are modern idols today?
2. What distracts you from the glory of God?

9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 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.” (Exodus 32:9-10)

We assume that God is planning to annihilate the Hebrews and start over with the children of Moses. If this is true, then Moses has the opportunity to become the new Abraham. God could still keep his promise to Abraham and Isaac and Israel so long as Moses is willing to go along with the plan.

1. Do you think that Moses was tempted to just start over with his own children? That certainly would have solved a lot of problems that we see later in Exodus.
2. Consider the parallels between Abraham and Moses. Neither one of them had to pull the trigger. They both stepped between God and a generation doomed to die. How do these prophets prefigure the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ?

Dr. Terrence Fretheim suggests that God is not planning on wiping out the Hebrews, but to remove his presence from their lives. “It is not sudden annihilation but a removal from within the sphere of God’s special care and concern. This would entail letting the effects of brokenness have their way with people. In other words, Israel is staring into the future far more devastating than any experience of bondage in Egypt” (Exodus, Fretheim, p. 284).

1. Do you buy that explanation?
2. Does that seem more consistent with the character of God throughout scripture?

God tells Moses, “Now leave me alone.” Many scholars see this as an opening for Moses to speak back to God.

1. Do you take this as a backward invitation to pray?
2. Is Moses guilty for ignoring God’s command and speaking up for the Israelites?
3. How is our relationship with God like a human relationship, with give and take; with subtle invitations to dig deeper?

11 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? 12 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. 13 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.’” 14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. (Exodus 32:11-14)

Moses cleverly reverses God’s rhetorical technique. He tells God, “Why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt.” God reminds Moses that these people are his responsibility, and Moses retorts that they are also God’s responsibility. God and Moses are keeping each other mutually accountable for these “stiff-necked people.”

Moses gives God four good reasons to relent from his anger.

• He appeals to God’s reasonableness. God went to great trouble to rescue the Israelites from Egypt. It doesn’t make sense to wipe them out now.
• He appeals to God’s reputation. What will the neighbors say if God annihilates or abandons the Hebrews? The Egyptians will say terrible things about God if he neglects the Hebrews. It was always God’s plan to save all people from sin and death through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. God’s reputation among the nations was at stake here.
• He reminds God of his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. The character of God demands fidelity to the children of Abraham. I suspect that Moses is also subtly reminding God of Isaac’s near death experience and how God does not sacrifice his people.
• Finally, the overall argument moves God to pity. Moses is trying to provoke the mercy of God.

1. Which argument do you think was most convincing to God?
2. Which argument do you think was most important to Moses?
3. Which argument best fits our own experience of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ?

The biggest question in today’s scripture concerns whether God can change his mind. Some people try to wiggle out of the tension of the story by saying that God always intended to spare his people. They argue that God was just testing Moses. But that’s not the clear meaning of the text. This story was written the way it was to provoke us to pray.

1. When have you prayed to God when things have seemed hopeless?
2. When have you seen a miraculous healing or a transformed situation because of God’s invitation to us to pray?