the Seventh Week after Epiphany
Click here to learn more!
Read the Bible
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Exodus 32:20
Bible Study Resources
Concordances:
- Nave'sDictionaries:
- AmericanEncyclopedias:
- CondensedParallel Translations
After, he tooke the calfe, which they had made, and burned it in the fire, and ground it vnto powder, and strowed it vpon the water, & made the children of Israel drinke of it.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burned it in the fire, and filed it with a file until it was ground into dust, and he scattered it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
He took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Yisra'el drink of it.
Then Moses destroyed the calf that the people had made. He melted it in the fire. Then he ground the gold until it became dust and threw it into the water. Then he forced the Israelites to drink that water.
He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
And he took the ox which they had made, burning it in the fire and crushing it to powder, and he put it in the water and made the children of Israel take a drink of it.
He melted the idol the people had made, and he ground it into powder. He scattered it in their water and made them drink it.
Seizing the calf they had made, he melted it in the fire and ground it to powder, which he scattered on the water. Then he made the people of Isra'el drink it.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
And he tooke the Calfe which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it vpon the water, and made the children of Israel drinke of it.
Then Moses took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it on the surface of the water and made the Israelites drink it.
And having taken the calf which they made, he consumed it with fire, and ground it very small, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Israel to drink it.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
Then he took the calf they had made, burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, and scattered the powder over the face of the water. Then he forced the Israelites to drink it.
And he took the bull calf that they had made, and he burned it with the fire, and he crushed it until it became fine, and he scattered it on the surface of the water, and he made the Israelites drink.
And he took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire and ground it until it was fine, then he scattered it on the face of the water. And he made the sons of Israel to drink it .
Then he took the calf that the people had made and melted it in the fire. He ground it into powder. Then he threw the powder into the water and forced the Israelites to drink it.
He took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire, ground it to powder, poured it out on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.
Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.
He took the calf they had made and burned it. Then he ground it into powder, threw it into the water, and forced the people to drink it.
And he took the calf they had made and burned it with fire, ground it to dust, spread it over the top of the water, and made the people of Israel drink it.
And laying hold of the calf which they had made, he burnt it, and beat it to powder, which he strewed into water, and gave thereof to the children of Israel to drink.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the people of Israel drink it.
He took the bull-calf which they had made, melted it, ground it into fine powder, and mixed it with water. Then he made the people of Israel drink it.
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.
And he took the calf that they had made, and burned [it] with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed [it] on the water, and made the children of Israel drink [it].
And he took the calf, which thei hadden maad, and brente, and brak `til to poudur, which he spreynte in to watir, and yaf therof drynke to the sones of Israel.
and he taketh the calf which they have made, and burneth [it] with fire, and grindeth until [it is] small, and scattereth on the face of the waters, and causeth the sons of Israel to drink.
He took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, ground it to powder, and scattered it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and strewed it on the water, and made the sons of Israel drink of it.
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].
And he toke the calfe whiche they had made, and burned it in the fire, & stampt it into pouder, & strawed it in the water, & made the childre of Israel drinke of it.
He took the calf they had made, burned it up, and ground it to powder. He scattered the powder over the surface of the water and forced the Israelites to drink the water.
And he toke the calfe that they had made, and brent it with fyre, and stamped it vnto poulder, and strowed it in the water, & gaue it vnto the children of Israel to drynke,
Then he took the calf which they had made and completely burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it.
He took the calf that they had made, burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.
He took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it.
Then he took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it.
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
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 Deuteronomy 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. Deuteronomy 7:5, Deuteronomy 7:25, Deuteronomy 9:21, 2 Kings 23:6, 2 Kings 23:15
made the: Proverbs 1:31, Proverbs 14:14
Reciprocal: Genesis 35:4 - hid them Exodus 23:24 - overthrow Judges 18:17 - the graven 1 Kings 15:13 - and burnt 2 Kings 11:18 - brake they 1 Chronicles 14:12 - were burned 2 Chronicles 15:16 - cut down 2 Chronicles 34:4 - made dust Isaiah 37:19 - And have Acts 17:16 - his spirit Acts 19:19 - and burned
Cross-References
And he said. Should Esau come upon the one camp, and smite it, yet shall the camp that is left escape.
And Jacob said, God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, - Yahweh, who wast saying unto me, - Return to thy land and to thy kindred that I may deal well with thee:
And be commanded the first one saying: When Esau my brother shall fall in with thee, and shall ask thee, saying Whose art thou? and whither wouldst thou go? and to whom belong these before thee?
Then Israel their father said unto them - If so, then do this, - Take of the song of the land in your vessels, and carry down to the man a present, - A little balsam and a little honey, tragacanth gum and cistus gum, pistachio nuts, and almonds.
Wherefore ye shall make likenesses of your turnouts, and likenesses of your mice that are laying waste the land, and shall, give unto the, God of Israel, glory, - Peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your god, and from off your land.
And his servants said unto him, Lo! we pray thee, we have heard, of the kings of the house of Israel, that, kings known for lovingkindness, they are. Let us, we pray thee, put sackcloth upon our loins, and ropes about our head, and let us go forth unto the king of Israel, peradventure he will save alive thy soul.
He will not look, at any ransom, neither will he consent, though thou increase the bribe.
A wrathful man, stirreth up strife, but, he that is slow to anger, calmeth contention.
The wrath of a king, meaneth messengers of death, but, a man who is wise, will appease it.
A gift in secret, quencheth anger, and, a present in the bosom, mighty wrath.
Gill's Notes on the 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, Deuteronomy 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.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
The faithfulness of Moses in the office that had been entrusted to him was now to be put to the test. It was to be made manifest whether he loved his own glory better than he loved the brethren who were under his charge; whether he would prefer that he should himself become the founder of a “great nation,” or that the Lord’s promise should be fulfilled in the whole people of Israel. This may have been especially needful for Moses, in consequence of his natural disposition. See Numbers 12:3; and compare Exodus 3:11. With this trial of Moses repeated in a very similar manner Numbers 14:11-23, may be compared the trial of Abraham Genesis 22:0 and of our Saviour Matthew 4:8-10.
Exodus 32:8
These be thy gods ... have brought - This is thy god, O Israel, who has brought ...
Exodus 32:10
Let me alone - But Moses did not let the Lord alone; he wrestled, as Jacob had done, until, like Jacob, he obtained the blessing Genesis 32:24-29.
Exodus 32:14
This states a fact which was not revealed to Moses until after his second intercession when he had come down from the mountain and witnessed the sin of the people Exodus 32:30-34. He was then assured that the Lord’s love to His ancient people would prevail God is said, in the language of Scripture, to “repent,” when His forgiving love is seen by man to blot out the letter of His judgments against sin (2 Samuel 24:16; Joel 2:13; Jonah 3:10, etc.); or when the sin of man seems to human sight to have disappointed the purposes of grace (Gen 6:6; 1 Samuel 15:35, etc.). The awakened conscience is said to “repent,” when, having felt its sin, it feels also the divine forgiveness: it is at this crisis that God, according to the language of Scripture, repents toward the sinner. Thus, the repentance of God made known in and through the One true Mediator reciprocates the repentance of the returning sinner, and reveals to him atonement.
Exodus 32:17-18
Moses does not tell Joshua of the divine communication that had been made to him respecting the apostasy of the people, but only corrects his impression by calling his attention to the kind of noise which they are making.
Exodus 32:19
Though Moses had been prepared by the revelation on the Mount, his righteous indignation was stirred up beyond control when the abomination was before his eyes.
Exodus 32:20
See Deuteronomy 9:21. What is related in this verse must have occupied some time and may have followed the rebuke of Aaron. The act was symbolic, of course. The idol was brought to nothing and the people were made to swallow their own sin (compare Micah 7:13-14).
Exodus 32:22
Aaron’s reference to the character of the people, and his manner of stating what he had done Exo. 5:24, are very characteristic of the deprecating language of a weak mind.
Exodus 32:23
Make us gods - Make us a god.
Exodus 32:25
Naked - Rather unruly, or “licentious”.
Shame among their enemies - Compare Psalms 44:13; Psalms 79:4; Deuteronomy 28:37.
Exodus 32:26-29
The tribe of Levi, Moses’ own tribe, now distinguished itself by immediately returning to its allegiance and obeying the call to fight on the side of Yahweh. We need not doubt that the 3,000 who were slain were those who persisted in resisting Moses. The spirit of the narrative forbids us to conceive that the act of the Levites was anything like an indiscriminate massacre. An amnesty had first been offered to all by the words: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” Those who were forward to draw the sword were directed not to spare their closest relations or friends; but this must plainly have been with an understood qualification as regards the conduct of those who were to be slain. Had it not been so, they who were on the Lord’s side would have had to destroy each other. We need not stumble at the bold, simple way in which the statement is made.
Exodus 32:29
Consecrate yourselves to day to the Lord ... - The margin contains the literal rendering. Our version gives the most probable meaning of the Hebrew, and is supported by the best authority. The Levites were to prove themselves in a special way the servants of Yahweh, in anticipation of their formal consecration as ministers of the sanctuary (compare Deuteronomy 10:8), by manifesting a self-sacrificing zeal in carrying out the divine command, even upon their nearest relatives.
Exodus 32:31
Returned unto the Lord - i. e. again he ascended the mountain.
Gods of gold - a god of gold.
Exodus 32:32
For a similar form of expression, in which the conclusion is left to be supplied by the mind of the reader, see Daniel 3:15; Luke 13:9; Luke 19:42; John 6:62; Romans 9:22. For the same thought, see Romans 9:3. It is for such as Moses and Paul to realize, and to dare to utter, their readiness to be wholly sacrificed for the sake of those whom God has entrusted to their love. This expresses the perfected idea of the whole burnt-offering.
Thy book - The figure is taken from the enrolment of the names of citizens. This is its first occurrence in the Scriptures. See the marginal references. and Isaiah 4:3; Daniel 12:1; Luke 10:20; Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5, etc.
Exodus 32:33, Exodus 32:34
Each offender was to suffer for his own sin. Compare Exodus 20:5; Ezekiel 18:4, Ezekiel 18:20. Moses was not to be taken at his word. He was to fulfill his appointed mission of leading on the people toward the land of promise.
Exodus 32:34
Mine Angel shall go before thee - See the marginal references and Genesis 12:7.
In the day when I visit ... - Compare Numbers 14:22-24. But though the Lord chastized the individuals, He did not take His blessing from the nation.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
Verse Exodus 32:20. 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 Deuteronomy 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 אכת eccoth and דק 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.
