Moshe sojourns on high and receives the tablets of testimony. As this is about to be completed an astonishing thing takes place in the camp of Israel.
They grow tired of waiting for Moshe to return to them. He is their leader and has shown them the visions of holiness, which they agreed to follow and become a part of. Still without Moshe there doubts crept in and there are those who seek to take advantage of this seeming power vacuum.
Shemos: 32: 1. When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him:
"Come on! Make us gods that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we don't know what has become of him."
According to the Midrashim it is the mixed multitude that are clamoring for something to be done. The mixed multitude were those Egyptians who had converted long ago when Yosef made them do so in order to receive food from the warehouses.
Moshe wanted to take them with him when he left Egypt even though they may not have joined him with a full heart. They were basically along for the ride being opportunists of the moment thinking Moshe was the powerful one now and that they should throw their lot in with him. Because of their self centered focus they still retained their cultural past including idolatry. Therefore the first chance they had they jumped upon it seeking to make their own power supreme. With that in mind they went to Aaron.
Shemos: 32:4. He took [them] from their hand[s], fashioned it with an engraving tool, and made it into a molten calf, upon which they said: "These are your gods, O Israel, who have brought you up from the land of Egypt!"
When the people received their initial revelation via Moshe and Hashem they were one people. Aaron in this situation could have walked away to await Moshe’s arrival however, if he did so Israel would be lost forever split apart by the evil sown by the mixed multitude. Even though what Aaron did was wrong it still kept the people together albeit for an unholy reason. Further when the golden emerges from the fire Aaron says this:
Shemos: 32: 5. When Aaron saw [this], he built an altar in front of it, and Aaron proclaimed and said: "Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord."
How strange this is. Aaron builds an altar in front of the golden calf and yet says; tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord (YKVK-Hashem). Why include this holy name when Aaron knew that Moshe was speaking to Hashem at that very moment? The answer is both surprising and far seeing.
Aaron could not abandon the Jewish people to the mixed multitude. This is why he set up the connection to Hashem in the only way that he could. If the festival had been held that night all would have been lost including all of Israel. The fact that they waited until morning when the evil inclination was weakest was significant. Aaron did the best he could until Moshe could come along. Then he explains to Moshe everything that happened.
Shemos: 32: 24. I said to them, 'Who has gold?' So they took it [the gold] off and gave it to me; I threw it into the fire and out came this calf."
In a sense it is the evil that is made incarnate so that Moshe then can melt the gold and grind it into ashes place it in water and have the people of Israel drink of it.
Shemos: 32: 20. Then he took the calf they had made, burned it in fire, ground it to fine powder, scattered [it] upon the surface of the water, and gave [it to] the children of Israel to drink.
Why did they drink it? It was so that those who partook whole-heartedly in this abasement could be singled out. Those who did were later stricken with the plague that Hashem sent. Those who didn’t were able to rectify the evil so that it would not destroy them all.
Stay tuned…
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