Exodus 32:20Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

When the people created the golden calf, they engaged in revelry and celebration, while Moses mourned deeply and invoked a grave curse upon himself, yet his compassion for them remained unyielding. Observing the decline of those he cared for profoundly distressed him; what sorrow must he have felt, what tears did he shed? If a man could not endure the news of his only son succumbing to wickedness, even though the father was more sinful than his child, how much greater must Moses' anguish have been as he regarded thousands of people as his own, feeling even deeper affection for them than a father has for his children?

Moses shattered the idol of the calf, dispersed its remnants in the water, and offered it to the Israelites as a drink. The unfaithful are similarly broken, gradually coming to faith and partaking from the people of God, ultimately becoming one with the body of Christ.

This may explain why the calf was crushed, blended with water, and served as a drink so that the sinful might be consumed by Israel.

(Note: the reference to the Gentiles becoming part of the Church is implied here.)

The transgression involved the creation of an idol, specifically in the shape of a calf, fashioned for the purpose of idolatry. Moses, upon seeing this, ground it to powder and dissolved it in water, forcing those who had sinned to drink it. His intention was to eradicate that offending material which had facilitated the wrongdoing of individuals. This act was a prophetic foreshadowing of events both then and in our current era. Indeed, all forms of idolatry have been entirely vanquished, as declared by the righteous who, through authentic confession, have succeeded in obliterating the unholy elements within themselves.

Moses was unaware of who had created the golden calf, so he ‘burned ... the calf, and ground it to powder, and scattered its ashes upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink it’; those who were culpable for its creation ingested the ashes of the calf. Although the entire assembly contributed their earrings, some did so out of trepidation, mirroring Aaron’s own act of constructing an altar to the calf in fear. Thus, the ashes of the idol caused a spiritual affliction only in those who orchestrated the sin and incited others to participate in it.

Moses eradicated the ashes of the calf and compelled the people to consume them in the water of judgment, so that those who persisted in idolizing it might face judgment through their drinking (Num. 5:11-31).

The remains of the calf that the Israelites idolized in their misguided devotion were collected and mixed for the people to consume, teaching them to abhor what they witnessed being discarded in the waste.

Moses crushed the head of the golden calf into powder and cast it into water, instructing the people to drink from it. This was meant to confront the depravity of their hearts, which had been corrupted by severe betrayal, in order to soften them and prepare them for the delicate understanding of faith. Ultimately, the woman who threshed diligently will be gathered, while the one who threshed poorly will be left behind (Matt. 24:41).

A state lacking reason (refer to Exodus 32:1-4) disrupts and scatters the arrival of the divine Word. Through a nuanced contemplation, it dismantles the looseness of thought, which is attracted to sensations stemming from passions, enables a clear discernment of the mutual transformations and integration of the soul's natural faculties brought on by passion, and elevates them back to their original source of understanding. This is what it means to interpret the phrase ‘scattering on the water.’ The ignorance that clouds the mind is ‘erased’ when it thoughtfully considers the allure of passionate weakness, distinguishing the individual elements constituting it and elevating each to its fundamental truth.

It seems that, apart from the three thousand individuals referenced later who were struck down by the Levites, and who must be seen as a steadfast group of idolaters, all those who witnessed Moses' appearance on the sloping heights of the mountain and his significant actions quickly regained their senses and did not oppose him. Beneath Mount Sinai flows a stream known as Seil-Lejah. It is thought that this stream bore witness to the symbolic act that highlighted the futility of the false gods Israel had worshipped. It is believed that Moses instructed skilled craftsmen, knowledgeable in the chemical arts derived from Egypt, to transform the golden idol into a powdered form of chlorinated gold, which he then cast into the stream for the people to consume.