Exodus 32:1–14

2 thoughts on “Exodus 32:1–14”

1. I can’t help but hear this week’s reading as God being interpreted by Moses, filtered through Moses’ own anger, and then projected onto the circumstances. God has always been and will always be faithful and loving and forgiving and present. Yet, I think we too often see God as an outsider looking in rather than living within us, especially the God of the Old Testament. The civil war that breaks out after this week’s passage seems a disturbingly natural consequence of humans trying to draw a line about who God is and who understands God best. I think it’s Moses who projects onto God the anger he feels himself. And we get to hear his own inner wrestling with God, trying to figure out what God desires when faced with what Moses perceives as egregious behavior. It’s prevalent still today (and sometimes violent) between religions and within religions, when people express varying interpretations of scripture and differing opinions about faithful living.

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2. This one is so tough, especially with the anger and violence. I appreciated the discussion this week and the acknowledgement of that. One thing I found most interesting of this passage is how it folds into so many other parts of Exodus (and beyond). I did some previous research into how wealth plays into this episode, tying together the reparations (plunder) and the tabernacle (gift) and how the “wasting” of the wealth on the calf is indicative of wasting the gifts God has given us for greater things in the community. There’s a lot of “both/and” that works with that, but also the violence and anger is problematic in that reading. But this passage and its inner-biblical possibilities are all so rich that I keep coming back to it over and over again.

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