Exodus
32:1 ¶ And when the people saw that
Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves
together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before
us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of
Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 2
And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are
in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them
unto me. 3 And all the people brake off
the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them
unto Aaron. 4 And he received them
at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a
molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt. 5 And
when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made
proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD. 6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and
offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down
to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
These people
who have spent so long in Egypt with the worship of heathen gods want Aaron to
make gods for them to worship. That is what they have known for hundreds of
years and they are quick to abandon the singular devotion to the magnificent
God who created them and called them out of Egypt with such mighty signs. This
is a problem for Christians as we are often not willing to wait for God to do
something in our lives and rather quickly began looking backwards into the
things that we leaned on before we came to Christ.
As far as
they were concerned, Moses might have died on the mountain. Aaron is either a
creature of public opinion, maybe afraid of the masses, or he also doubts
whether or not Moses will return. So, he calls for their earrings.
Earrings had a special significance, which I pointed out in
Genesis. Jewelry played a part in ancient worship. Earrings
were not merely ornamentation for both men and women but were, scholars tell
us, sometimes amulets and charms to protect the openings of the face and head
from entry by evil spirits. They were clearly part of the idol worship of the
ancient world, the spiritual system that developed after the Flood. If you have difficulty seeing that side of
facial jewelry just look at the hundreds of occult earrings on a website like
Etsy.com. Some verses of note regarding men and women wearing earrings and of a
possible link to their occultic practices are;
Genesis
35:4 And they gave unto Jacob all the
strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in
their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem.
Judges
8:24 And Gideon said unto them, I would
desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his
prey. (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) 25 And they answered, We will willingly give
them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of
his prey.
In
the passage in Genesis, chapter 35, and here in Exodus we have a very clear
indication that something linked earrings to the spirit world.
Verse 4 is an astounding statement that makes Aaron worthy of
death. Of course, if you think about it, we do very much the same thing when we
say, “good luck!” or, “oh, how lucky you were.” When we, even absent-mindedly,
attribute our good fortune or our trouble to something or someone other than
God we do blaspheme His name and diminish the glory due Him.
Malachi 2:2 If ye will not
hear, and if ye will not lay it
to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will
even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed
them already, because ye do not lay it
to heart.
Aaron made a
molten calf. The calf/bull was a commonly worshipped as a god in the Ancient
Near East and in Egypt. While Moses was receiving what may have been the
introduction of the alphabet over pictographic writing the Hebrews were falling
down to worship the object symbolized by the pictographic rendering of a calf,
a young bull. Aleph, the first letter of Hebrew, is derived from the
pictographic representation of the young bull. Alpha, the Greek letter, was
derived from Aleph. With the ‘alpha-bet’ God removed the pictures that were
worshipped to letters that represented thoughts and ideas only rather than
sacred objects representing thoughts and ideas.
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