Exodus 32

32 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods^[a] who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

² Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,^[b] Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”
⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” ⁶ So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
⁷ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. ⁸ They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
⁹ “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”
¹¹ But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? ¹² Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. ¹³ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” ¹⁴ Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
¹⁵ Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. ¹⁶ The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.
¹⁷ When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”
¹⁸ Moses replied:

“It is not the sound of victory,
    it is not the sound of defeat;
    it is the sound of singing that I hear.”

¹⁹ When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain. ²⁰ And he took the calf the people had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

²¹ He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”
²² “Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron answered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. ²³ They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ ²⁴ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
²⁵ Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. ²⁶ So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.
²⁷ Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” ²⁸ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. ²⁹ Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”
³⁰ The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”
³¹ So Moses went back to the Lord and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. ³² But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”
³³ The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. ³⁴ Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”
³⁵ And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.

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 Such a deep and wounding betrayal.  That is all that I can think when I read this story.  The people have pledged themselves to the Lord.  They have committed to following everything that He says and becoming His people.  Their food and water and very survival are held in His hands.  And then they do this...God is ready to wipe them out and start over with Moses.  Amazingly Moses intercedes and pleads for their survival.  I don't know if he just doesn't know how bad the sin and revelry were or if he has a deep love for his people or if he is not wanting his life's work to be wasted.  Whatever the case, he throws himself in with the Israelites and asks to share their fate if God is planning to wipe them out.  Just amazing servant leadership.

It is not that Moses condones what they have done.  He is all kinds of furious when he comes to the camp.  He makes the people drink contaminated water and forms the Levite hit squad, setting them apart for service to God for generations to come.

Why did they do it?  Why could the people have not waited just a little while longer?  I have found that the answers in these types of circumstances usually involve fear and almost always involve poor leadership.  The people are scared because they are faced with their impotence.  They are alone in the desert with no home to call their own.  There may be thousands of them but they have no walls to hide behind and no army to wage war against anyone else.  Their food and water are being provided by a God they cannot see and, while that has been great so far, no one knows when God will change His mind and stop giving quail and manna.  Moses has been gone for a long time and they are bored and scared...two conditions that are ripe for playing out terrible scenarios in their heads.  They convince themselves that they need a God that they can build; a god that is under their control; a god that will give them what they want if they will worship in the right way.  So they become unreasonable.

And Aaron.  Oh, Aaron.  This is why God chose Moses instead of you.  No integrity.  No faith.  No strength to lead a people. I am sure that the public outcry was intense.  I am sure that threats, both subtle and flagrant, were issued.  I am sure that he did not mean for it to go as far as it did.  It does not matter.  You were entrusted with the care and supervision of God's people for a short time.  While Moses is on that mountain offering to die for his people, you are caving and cowering because some of these same people don't like you.

Fear and poor leadership.  They always end in disaster.