And the LORD said to Moses, "Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'" And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you." But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, 'With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.'" And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.
Exodus 32:7-14
Aaron appears to have weakly and ineffectually tried to give a religious and spiritual slant to the people's base action by calling their disgraceful exhibition a 'feast to the Lord' (5); but not thus easily can idolatry be made to look respectable, and God dramatically intervenes to call it by its proper name (7, 8). The words with which He denounces them are ominously significant, calling them to Moses not 'my people' but 'thy people', as if having disowned them for their sin. Nor is this an exaggerated form of words, for, as 10 makes clear, this is what was in the Lord's mind, as He proposed to Moses to begin all over again with him and make of him a great nation instead of Israel, thus initiating a new line. Moses' reaction to this marks him out as one of the greatest of men. Even in the context of the outbreak of divine wrath against His people it is possible to see how this must have been a test for Moses' integrity of heart. If it was, he instantly and resolutely died to it, died to the prospect of becoming the father of a new line of promise, and to the honour and fame it would undoubtedly bring him; and out of a selfless love for the people he challenged God and - dare we say it? - in faith contradicted Him, speaking to Him of Israel as 'Thy people' (11). The significance of this 'Thy' is seen in the verses that follow, for Moses pleaded on their behalf, not any extenuating circumstances, as if to suggest they were not quite so bad as to merit such drastic treatment, but the covenant (13) and His own faithful word and oath to them. And such was the effect of his agonising and audacious intercession that the divine intention was changed (14), mysterious and inexplicable though this be to all our notions of the sovereignty of God. As James puts it, 'The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much'. Never was such intercession needed so much by Israel as at that time!