Week 4 Exodus
Exodus 32 is the story of the golden calf.
It’s a strange story. Right out there on the surface it seems to say that a) the Lord got super angry; b) Moses argued that the Lord shouldn’t be so angry; and c) the Lord cooled-down after Moses talked some sense into him.
It makes the Lord seem a bit loony.
So a good bible reader’s question is: if I’m reading a passage and it makes the Lord seem like a psycho then am I reading the passage the way it’s supposed to be read?
And a follow-up question is: is there another way to read this so that it makes better sense?
I looked back at what the Lord said. He definitely told Moses that he was planning to destroy Israel. And then he said: I will make you, Moses, into a great nation instead of them.
When I read the story I hardly noticed the comment but it’s a pretty gigantic offer the Lord makes to Moses. You can be the replacement guy for Abraham-Isaac-Jacob!
So I wonder if the story is not about Moses the Hero-Negotiator. What if it’s about Moses the man who was being tested by the Lord with a Hugely Tempting Offer? It changes the story quite a bit if it all turns on the question of what was going on in Moses’ soul between the last phrase of verse ten and the first phrase of verse eleven.
Note: quote from Exodus 32:10 (NLT)