Ver. 1. Up, make us gods.] Aaron might make a calf, but the people made it a god, by adoring it. “Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus, Non facit ille Deos; qui rogat, iste facit.”—Martial. Ver. “2. Brake off the golden ear-rings.] Hereby he hoped to break their design; but all in vain for they were “mad upon their idols.” (Jeremiah 50:38)
Ver. 3. Brake off the golden ear-rings.] Which they had got of the Egyptians. (Exodus 12:35) To make use of heathen authors for ostentation, is to make a calf of the treasure gotten out of Egypt.
Ver. 4. A molten calf.] In imitation of the Egyptian idol Apis, a pied-bull. A man may pass through Ethiopia unchanged; but he cannot dwell there, and not be discoloured. How oft, alas, have we abused God’s mercy; taking his jewels, and making a golden calf of them!
Ver. 5. A feast to Jehovah.] Whom these idolators pretended to worship in the golden calf; as did also Jehu, (2 Kings 10:16,29 2 Chronicles 11:15) and as the Papists at this day. But with what face can some of their Rabbis excuse this people from idolatry? or the Jesuits their image worshippers?
Ver. 6. Rose up to play.] To dance about the calf. Now, if they were so cheered and strengthened by those baneful bits, those murdering morsels; should not we much more by God’s spiritual provisions, to dance as David did, to do his work with all our might
Ver. 7. For thy people, which thou broughtest.] God will own them no longer; they are now discovenanted. The saints by gross sins may lose their ius aptitudinale, non ius haereditarium, their fitness for God’s kingdom; they may sin away all their comfortables.
Ver. 8. They have turned aside quickly.] Moses’s back was but newly turned, as it were. “I marvel that you are so soon removed,” &c. (Galatians 1:6) [See Trapp on “Ga 1:6”] When we have spent all our wind on our people, their hearts will be still apt to be “carried away with every wind of doctrine,“—in our absence especially. “Mures, fele absente, choreas ducunt.”—Suidas.
Ver. 9. A stiffnecked people.] And so they are still to this very day. Jerome complains that in his time they thrice a day curse Christ in their synagogue, and closed up their prayers with Maledic, Domine, Nazaraeis. They are thought to advise most of that mischief which the Turk puts in execution against Christians. They counterfeit Christianity in Portugal even to the degree of priesthood, and think they may do it, either for the avoiding of danger, or increasing their substance. There are very few of them that turn Christians in good earnest: Adeo in cordibus eorum radices fixit pertinacitas. So stubborn they are to this day, and stiffnecked, their necks are wholly possessed with an iron sinew. Jerome, in Isa., lib. xii. cap. 49, tom. 5, et lib. xiv. cap. 42. Rivet., Jesuita Vapul., 322.
Ver. 10. Let me alone.] God is fain to bespeak his own freedom: as if Moses’s devotion were stronger than God’s indignation. Great is the power of prayer; able, after a sort, to transfuse a dead palsy into the hand of Omnipotency. For, Let me alone, the Chaldee hath, Leave off thy prayer: but Moses would not. If he get but his head above water, the Lord shall hear of David. (Psalms 69:1-3)
Ver. 11. Lord, why doth thy wrath.] God offered Moses a great fortune. (Exodus 32:10) He tendering God’s glory refused, and makes request for the people. It is the ingenuity of saints to study God’s ends more than their own, and drown all self-respects in his glory. Good servants, such as were Bacon and Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth should consult their master’s praise, rather than their own profit. “Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant.” (Hebrews 3:2,5)
Ver. 12. Repent of this evil.] God’s repenting is mutatio rei, non Dei; effectus, non affectus; facti, non consilii; not a change of his will, but of his work.
Ver. 13. Remember Abraham.] Here Moses neither invocateth the patriarchs, nor allegeth their merits, but reminds God of his promise to them, and presseth the performance. In the want of other rhetoric, let Christians in their prayers urge this with repetition. Lord, thou hast promised, thou hast promised. Put the promises into suit, and you have anything. God cannot deny himself.
Ver. 14. And the Lord repented.] See Exodus 32:12. Moses here had a hard pull, but he carried it.
Ver. 15. Written on both their sides.] See the like in other mystical books. (Ezekiel 2:10 Revelation 5:1)
Ver. 16. The work of God.] The greater was the people’s loss, brought upon them by their sin.
Ver. 17. And when Joshua.] Who had waited, in some part of the mount, the return of his master.
Ver. 18. It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery.] As Joshua, a man of a warlike spirit, was ready to imagine. Non est vox clamoris fortitudinis, vel clamandi fortitudinem: so the original hath it.
Ver. 19. And Moses’s anger waxed hot.] Meekness in this case had been no better than mopishness. How blessedly blown up was Moses here! So, Cranmer the martyr, though in his own cause so meek and mild, that it was grown to a proverb, “Do my Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and you shall be sure to have him your friend for ever after,” yet in the truth’s cause, opposed by any man, no general in battle ever showed greater courage and constancy than he, saith our Churchantiquary. He saw the calf, and the dancing.] One calf about another. It was a custom among Papists, that men should run to the image of St Virus, and there they should dance all day, usque ad animae deliquium, till they fainted and fell into a swoon. Antiq. Eccl. Brit., p. 341 Joh. Maulii, loc. com., 187.
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.
Ver. 21. What did this people unto thee?] The people sinned by precipitancy; Aaron by popularity.
Ver. 22. That they are set on mischief.] The whole world is so. (1 John 2:16 5:19) Quomodo Plautus, “In fermento toto iacet uxor.”
Ver. 23. We wot not what, &c.] See the danger of nonresidency.
Ver. 24. There came out this calf.] A very poor excuse. Something he would have said, if he had known what. Here he “hid his sin as Adam,” (Job 31:33) being too much his child.
Ver. 25. Aaron had made them naked.] As Aaron’s engraving instrument writes down his sin: so the confession of other more ingenuous Jews proclaims the Israelites, saying that, No punishment befalleth thee, O Israel, in which there is not an ounce of this calf. Mos. Gerund.
Ver. 26. Let him come.] This word through haste and earnestness Moses omitteth. The Chaldee and Greek version supply it.
Ver. 27. Slay every man his brother.] Not all that they met with, for so they might have slain the innocent; but all that were chief in the transgression. In the war against the Waldenses in France, the Pope’s great army took one populous city and put to the sword sixty thousand, among whom were many of their own Catholics. For Arnoldus the Cistercian Abbot, being the Pope’s Legate in this great war, commanded the soldiers saying, Caedite eos: novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius: Kill them one with another: for the Lord knoweth who are his. This was fine Popish justice. Caesar Heisterbuchensis, Hist., lib. v. cap. 21.
Ver. 28. About three thousand.] Chieftains and ringleaders.
Ver. 29. Consecrate yourselves.] Regain that blessing which your father Levi lost. (Genesis 49:5,7)
Ver. 30. And now I will go up unto the Lord.] As angry as he was, he could pray for them: as when our children, through their own fault have got some sickness, for all our angry speeches we go to the physician for them.
Ver. 31. Made them gods of gold.] Sin must not be confessed in the lump only, and by wholesale, but we must instance the particulars.
Ver. 32. Blot me, I pray thee.] God never revealed his love to Moses more than when he thus earnestly prayed for God’s people. Joab never pleased David better than when he made intercession for Absalom.
Ver. 33. Blot out.] Cut him out of the roll of the living.
Ver. 34. I will visit.] I will pay them home for the new and the old.
Ver. 35. They made.] [See Trapp on “Ex 32:1”]