But, for verse 23
let’s go back to the beginning of mankind’s history after the Flood. Man
degraded their own vision of God’s glory and began to worship representations
of created beings.
Genesis 3:6 ¶ And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and
a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did
eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
There were things
that were pleasant to the eyes to mankind that he grew to worship in place of
God.
Exodus
20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image, or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven
above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not
bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of
them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Exodus 32:8 They have
turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them
a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said,
These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt.
Numbers
33:52 Then ye shall drive out all the
inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their
molten images, and quite pluck down all their
high places:
You
had gods like the Philistine Dagon, which some authorities link to the Assyrian
art of a merman; half man, half fish. The Egyptians were known for gods that
were manifested by animals, according to some authorities, like Thoth’s
dog-headed baboon, or Isis, Hethor, or Nut’s cow. The giving of the tablets of
the Ten Commandments in Exodus may be the beginning of the alphabet that we use, the
precursor to it. God created the writing
that contrasted with the pictograms of hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing that
dominated the ancient world. From China, Sumeria, and Egypt to the
civilizations of the ancient Americas pictures were used to convey ideas and
history and as representations of things worshipped. The basic units of
writing, the letters, become symbols for ideas rather than pictures
representing things to be worshipped as idols. ‘A’, instead of a symbol for a
bull or an ox, is Aleph in Hebrew and Alpha in Greek, and ‘A’ for modern
purposes. A good study for this is Marc A. Ouaknin’s Mysteries of the Alphabet. This could be part of God drawing a
people out of a world of idolatrous pictures or creatures to be adored and
turning their writing into ideas to be expressed by symbols.
What
came along with this idolatry was a peculiar form of worship involving sexual
acts. Returning to comments I originally made in Exodus.
“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 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.
This is a return to Egypt in a religious sense. The ensuing nudity
and orgy was in keeping with the sexual aspects of Ancient Near Eastern
religion. See verse 25 in this chapter coming up.
Exodus 32:25 And when Moses
saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame
among their enemies:)
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