Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Deuteronomy 9:20-29
The Consequences of the Molten Calf Incident (Deuteronomy 9:20).
The molten calf incident had nearly been catastrophic both for the people and for Aaron. But Moses had acted swiftly to deal suitably with the molten calf and the people in the camp, and then he had gone up the Mount and pleaded for them and for Aaron with Yahweh. And he had prevailed.
We may analyse this in the words of Moses as follows:
a Yahweh was very angry with Aaron to destroy him, and I prayed for Aaron also at the same time (Deuteronomy 9:20).
b And I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust, and I cast its dust into the brook that descended out of the mount (Deuteronomy 9:21).
c And at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, you provoked Yahweh to wrath (Deuteronomy 9:22).
d And when Yahweh sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, “Go up and possess the land which I have given you” (Deuteronomy 9:23 a).
d Then you rebelled against the commandment of Yahweh your God, and you did not believe him, nor did you listen to his voice (Deuteronomy 9:23 b).
c You have been rebellious against Yahweh from the day that I knew you (Deuteronomy 9:24).
b So I fell down before Yahweh the forty days and forty nights that I fell down, because Yahweh had said he would destroy you (Deuteronomy 9:25).
a And I prayed to Yahweh, and said, “O Lord Yahweh, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, which you have redeemed through your greatness, that you have brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin, lest the land from where you brought us out say, “Because Yahweh was not able to bring them into the land which he promised to them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are your people and your inheritance, which you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 9:26).
Note that in ‘a' Yahweh was very angry with Aaron to destroy him, and Moses prayed for Aaron also at the same time, while in the parallel we have the prayer that prevailed for both the people and Aaron. In ‘b' we have the action that he took among the people to avert Yahweh's anger, and in the parallel we have the strenuous action that he took in the Mount before Yahweh. In ‘c' we are reminded that they provoked Yahweh to wrath at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, and in the parallel he simply declares that they have been rebellious against Yahweh from the day that he knew them. In ‘d' he describes how Yahweh sent them from Kadesh-barnea, saying, “Go up and possess the land which I have given you” and in the parallel we learn that once again they rebelled against the commandment of Yahweh their God, and did not believe Him, nor listen to His voice.
‘ And Yahweh was very angry with Aaron to destroy him, and I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.'
And Yahweh had also been very angry at Aaron as well, and had intended to destroy him. But by his intercession (Deuteronomy 9:26) Moses had averted both the sentence on the people and that sentence as well. This occurrence is not mentioned in Exodus, but a little thought will reveal that it was inevitable. What Aaron had done was ‘unforgivable'. The wonder is not that we find it here, but that we do not find it in Exodus. It suggests that that section of Exodus was written when Aaron was still alive so that Moses had wanted to spare his brother the agony of knowing that he was going down in history as a renegade. But it does serve to explain the severity of Aaron's punishment later when Moses was spared over the incident at Meribah. For Aaron it had been one grave sin too many, and he had to die.
‘ And I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust, and I cast its dust into the brook that descended out of the mount.'
And Moses had taken ‘their sin', the calf, and burned it with fire, and had then taken the resulting gold, and had stamped on it and ground it very small ‘until it was as fine as dust'. Then he had cast the gold dust into the mountain beck that came down from the Mount. See for this Exodus 32:20 where the description is very similar, but there he also made them drink of the water. They were drinking their god! The point, however, here is that sin had soured the blessing that came from God's mountain.
Perhaps the tossing of it in the water from the Mount was a kind of ‘devoting' of it to Yahweh Who was still seen as on the Mount. It would hardly be welcome in the actual Mount itself except as something ‘devoted'. The stamping on it may have been in order to assist in the process of turning it to dust, but it may equally have been a deliberate slight on the remains of the calf and what it represented. It was of earth and it was forcefully returned to the earth.
The fact that in the analysis this item is parallel with his intercession for them in the Mount confirms that by this action he was seeking to avert the anger of Yahweh (His aversion to their sin).
This destruction of the calf was exactly what Moses had also told the people they must do to the gods of Canaan (Deuteronomy 7:5; Deuteronomy 7:25; Deuteronomy 12:3). Thus they had in this a practical example arising out of their own folly.
‘ And at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, you provoked Yahweh to wrath.'
Then Moses briefly reminds them of other incidents where they had been stiffnecked, at Taberah when the fire of Yahweh burnt among them because of their complaining (Numbers 11:1), at Massah when they became belligerent at the lack of water (Deuteronomy 6:16; Exodus 17:1; compare Numbers 20:10), at Kibroth-hattavah where the people failed to restrain themselves and revealed their greed in gathering too many quails which had died, thus eating some when they had gone bad (Number Deuteronomy 11:31). In all these places they had ‘provoked Yahweh to anger/wrath' by their behaviour (compare Deuteronomy 4:25; Deuteronomy 9:7; Deuteronomy 9:18; Deuteronomy 31:29; Deuteronomy 32:16; Deuteronomy 32:21).
‘ And when Yahweh sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, “Go up and possess the land which I have given you.” Then you rebelled against the commandment of Yahweh your God, and you did not believe him, nor did you listen to his voice.'
And the same had been fatally true at Kadesh-barnea when they had refused to obey Yahweh's command to go up and possess the land because they were afraid at the report of the scouts. They had rebelled against His command, an unforgivable crime for soldiers. It was mutiny. And they had refused to believe Him and would not listen to His promises. That was sacrilege.
‘ You have been rebellious against Yahweh from the day that I knew you.'
Indeed Moses sums it all up in one sentence. There had never been a time when they had not been rebellious, from the first moment when he had arrived in Egypt. Ever since he had known them they had been continually open to being rebellious.
‘ So I fell down before Yahweh the forty days and forty nights that I fell down, because Yahweh had said he would destroy you. And I prayed to Yahweh, and said, O Lord Yahweh, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, which you have redeemed through your greatness, that you have brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin, lest the land from where you brought us out say, “Because Yahweh was not able to bring them into the land which he promised to them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.” '
Note how the analysis reveals that he saw this prayer as one whole. It was so serious that it could not be used in order to follow a literary method. Every phrase was telling in his battle for their lives.
So he reminded them again how it was only through his intercession that God had not destroyed every last man of them, Aaron included, man, woman and child. He had had to deeply humiliate himself. Note the repetition of the verb. ‘I fell down - the forty days and nights that I fell down'. It had been a long and persistent and costly intercession. And what had been the basis of his prayer? Not the deserving of the people, that was certain. He was praying that they would not get what they deserved. No, the basis had been twofold, the maintenance of Yahweh's reputation among the Egyptians and all who knew of these events, and for the sake of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
He had reminded Yahweh that they were His people and His inheritance because they were descended from the patriarchs, that He had used His own greatness in order to redeem them from Egypt, and that He had exerted His mighty hand to that end. So He must remember that they were the people whom He had delivered. Furthermore he had pictured Egypt who had suffered under His activities as interested in their progress and waiting to gloat, and he had pointed out that if news came back that Israel had perished in the wilderness it would redound on Him. They would have impugned both His ability and might (‘Yahweh was not able'), and His covenant loyalty (‘it was because He hated them'). They would have deemed all His actions a mean-spirited trick, and a sign of Someone who had promised more than He could perform.
He has no false conceptions about Israel, and does not hold his punches. He prays, ‘Do not look at their stubbornness, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin'. He does not question that they deserved to be destroyed. Indeed he painted them as black as could be. He was concerned only for God's holiness. Nothing could have more brought out to them that they were far from righteous (Deuteronomy 9:4).
(When compared with Exodus 32:11 it will be seen that this is a paraphrase of the prayer there with the points in inverted order. This is a speech and here he wishes the emphasis to be on God's faithfulness to His promises to the patriarchs as the main reason why they should not be destroyed so as to demonstrate that their entry has nothing to do with their own righteousness).
‘ Yet they are your people and your inheritance, which you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.'
And his final plea was again that they were His people and His inheritance, and that He had demonstrated this when He had exerted His great power and His outstretched arm (Deuteronomy 4:34; Deuteronomy 5:15; Deuteronomy 7:19; Deuteronomy 11:2; Deuteronomy 26:8; Exodus 6:6) in order to bring them out. Whatever they had done, he had pleaded, surely He must be faithful to what He had promised to Abraham, for it was because they were Abraham's descendants, at least in principle (members of his ‘household' by birth or choice), that they were His people and His inheritance.
What no doubt pleased God was the heart of Moses. Here was one whose sole concern was Yahweh's honour and glory. It was doubtful if He Himself was too bothered about His reputation for doing what was absolutely just as far as the Egyptians were concerned. But He was delighted that Moses cared so much. We are left to recognise that Moses' prayer was successful. But the point of bringing all this out here was to disillusion the people about their own righteousness. Through God's grace He had accepted them as His people. But it was not because they deserved it. If it had been left to their righteousness they would not be there. Let them then take to heart that they deserved nothing. They were not worthy. It was all of grace.