what impiety they were committing. Moses, there- fore, hastened down from the mount : and, filled with indignation against them for their wickedness, he testified his displeasure in the way recorded in our text.
Let us consider, I. The grounds of his indignation —
The worshipping of the golden calf was a sin of most extraordinary enormity—
[Such interpositions in their behalf had that people seen, as never had been witnessed by any other people under heaven. And they were still within sight of that burning mount where Jehovah himself, their great Deliverer, yet vouchsafed to them his visible presence. They had but just before, too, received an express command to make no symbol of the Deity3, nor to keep in existence any of the gods of the heathen, but to " destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire ;" and not so much as to " desire the silver or gold that was on them, or to take it unto them, lest they should be snared therein ; but they were utterly to detest and abhor it, as an accursed thingV Yet, behold ! within less than forty days, they desire Aaron to make them a golden image, similar, probably, to what they had seen in Egypt0 ; and they take the ear-rings from their sons and from their daughters for the purpose of forming it ; and, having formed it, they offer sacrifices to it, and ascribe to it the honour of all their past deliverances, saying, " These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt d."
This was plain and unequivocal idolatry. Perhaps they might be ready to deny this charge, just as the Papists have since done ; and to say, that they only looked to the calf as a symbol, to remind them of the Deity, to whom alone they had respect in all the worship that they paid. They might say, that they could not be supposed to ascribe their deliverance to that, which but a few days before was in their own ears, and had no collective existence till it was cast into a mould and made a calf. But God declares it to have been idolatry, as all the worship paid to images and crucifixes by the Church of Rome also is ; as the Apostle, in reference to this very trans- action, says ; " Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them: as it is written, The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to playe."
a Exod. xx. 4. b Deut. vii. 5, 25, 26. e Ezek. xx. 8.
d ver. 1 — 8. e Compare ver. 6. with 1 Cor. x. 7.