And it came to pass, when he came near the camp, and saw the calf and the dancing, that Moses' anger burned, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and shattered them beneath the mountain.
Moses comes down the mountain with two stone tablets, and within sight of the camp he shatters them. Why would the lawgiver destroy what God had just given him?
Moses broke the tablets outside the camp, before Israel ever held them:
The first time the law was given on tablets of stone, it never reached them at all. Moses broke them. You could not put the law beside the golden calf. Moses did not know what to do with the tablets. He had not asked God about it, at least I have always thought so; it was his righteous indignation. God could not break His law, of course, but man could not have it.
If the tablets had reached the camp, judgment would have reached it too. One writer sees Moses leaving room for God to act another way:
I can well understand how deeply Moses was affected when he broke the tablets of stone. What must God have done if he had carried them down? He must have brought in immediate judgment on the lawbreakers. Moses met the difficulty in this way, so to speak. He said: if I do not carry them down, God will have an opportunity to bring out His resource — if there is any resource. God is holy, they are guilty, and if the law is bound on them He must judge them. So he broke the tablets of stone, and God did not rebuke him for doing it.
The stones carried the terms of a covenant. Breaking them said openly what had already happened:
Here was the covenant in the hands of the mediator; everything was plain and clear... This action was full of meaning. The people had broken the covenant, the mediator of the covenant bore witness to it, and judgment follows.
Commentators read the anger differently. Some see a man so shaped by God's presence that he did the right thing at once:
He took the tablets of the law which God had given him, and broke them at the foot of the mountain. Why does he act like this? Through entering into God's mind, from being with God. He does exactly the right thing at the right moment. It was the instinct of divine communion. Beautiful action of Moses! The glory of Jehovah was cared for, and the safety of the people too. The breaking of the tablets met both needs. If the law had come into the camp, it could only have destroyed them. And where then would the witness to what He is in His own nature have been?
Others notice a change in Moses. On the mountain he pleaded for Israel; at the sight of the calf he pleads no more:
But now Moses leaves the immediate atmosphere of God's grace. He becomes a spectator of Israel's condition himself, and his feeling is indignation, not intercession... "God, the judge of all," who must always judge according to His own holiness, can at the same time act according to His own grace. He cannot excuse sin.
The same man who broke the stones went back up the mountain for the people who caused it:
His "anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain." He destroyed the golden calf, and made the children of Israel drink the powder. But right afterwards he can say to them, "I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin." And for the sake of these very people, he prayed that God would blot him out of His book.
The story does not end with broken pieces on the ground. On the second occasion the terms were different:
On the second occasion what a difference! The lawgiver was called into the presence of God, who then was pleased to give a mingling of mercy along with law... It was not law alone, and not grace alone, but rather the mingling of grace along with law. Without this mingling of grace and mercy with law, God could not have carried on His dealings with Israel at all, or even brought them into the land. So on this occasion the law was still committed to man. But it was shut up in the ark, not displayed with all its terrors before people's eyes.
- Broken already. Israel broke the covenant before Moses ever reached the camp. The smashed stones only announced what was already true.
- Broken outside. The tablets never entered the camp. Israel never held pure law at all.
- Broken to spare. Carried in, the law could only have brought immediate judgment. Breaking it left room for God to bring out His own resource.
- Broken, then pleading. The hand that smashed the stones went back up the mountain. Moses asked God to blot him out for the very people who sinned.
- Broken, then hidden. The second tablets went into the ark. Law was still given, but now mingled with mercy, not displayed in all its terror.
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].
Moses walks into the camp and deals first with the idol, not with the people. He destroys it step by step, then makes Israel swallow it — a strange punishment with a purpose.
The whole nation had shared in the sin, so the whole camp had to see the god destroyed.
But the congregation as such had shared in the guilt. Israel as a whole was defiled, and as a people had to suffer the shame; so Moses made the god as contemptible as possible, in the eyes of all the camp... No remains of their god were to be reserved for future idolatry. So they drank up their deity! The god they had bowed down to, and in whose honour they had held their sacred feast, ended in corruption inside the very bodies of its worshippers!
The punishment turned their own feast against them.
He burnt the golden calf and then ground it to powder — a humiliating end for the supposed "god," that brought them up from Egypt! And not only this. He also mixed the burnt dust with water and made the people drink their "god," instead of drinking in honour of it, as they had been doing.
How do you burn a metal image and then grind it to powder?
Some have suggested that the image was really made of wood and only covered with gold. But the account will not allow this. It says the calf was "molten" — cast metal, in an older translation — and then shaped more exactly with an engraving tool. It is enough to suppose that the calf was at least softened by fire, if not melted, then beaten into thin plates. After that it was pounded into dust and scattered into the brook.
Moses had the training for it, and the result matched the offence.
The Egyptians knew the chemical process involved in doing this unusual thing. Moses, we must remember, was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," so he knew well how to do it. We are told the punishment fitted their offence with a certain irony: gold treated in this way and made into a drink has a most nauseating taste. This literal, physical act brought home to the people the filthiness and bitterness of their great sin.
Getting rid of the calf was only half of what Moses was after.
He breaks the tablets of the covenant, for they had already been broken on man's side, and this is no time to announce them... Their sin must not only be put away, but they must taste in themselves the reality of it.
One writer turns this into a test of how we take correction from others.
He sought to make them feel their sin. If I have gone wrong in the things of God, what a happy thing it is if any brother can so bring it home to me, that I see it, feel it, and, in that sense, have to drink it. In this way Israel was forced to admit before God what sinners they had been.
Moses judged the sin hard, then prayed for the sinners.
He destroyed the golden calf, and made the children of Israel drink of the powder. But right afterwards he can say to them, "I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin." And he prayed, for the sake of these very people, that God would blot him out of His book.
Commentators differ on how far this reaches. One writer sees it as marking Israel's whole later history.
What follows is a symbolic action, carrying deep practical truths... Their "sin" (Moses says in Deuteronomy 9:21, "I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burnt it with fire" — an older translation; the ESV has "the sinful thing") became part of them. It was the "original sin" of that whole age. It hung over them all through the time of their prophets and their kings, and the whole period they were in the land. They never recovered from its effects.
- Made — they made a god for themselves. Moses burned it, ground it, and scattered it, so nothing remained for future idolatry.
- Mocked — the god they credited with bringing them out of Egypt ended as dust in a stream, then as corruption inside its own worshippers.
- Swallowed — they had drunk in the calf's honour; now they drank the calf. Its foul taste brought home the filthiness and bitterness of their sin.
- Felt — the sin had to be put away and also tasted. They had to admit before God what they were, and it is a mercy when someone makes us feel our own wrong.
- Remembered — Moses judged the sin, then went back to plead atonement. Yet one writer says the sin hung over Israel through all their prophets and kings.