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Commentaries on Exodus 32:4

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John Gill - Exposition

John Gill

INTRODUCTION TO Exodus 32 This chapter gives an account of the idolatry of the Israelites making and worshipping a golden calf, Exodus 32:1 the information of it God gave to Moses, bidding him at the same time not to make any suit in their favour, that he might consume them, and make a large nation out Moses's family, Exodus 32:7 the intercession of Moses for them, in which he succeeded, Exodus...

John Gill - Exposition

John Gill

And he received [them] at their hand,.... For the use they delivered them to him: and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf; that is, after he had melted the gold, and cast it into a mould, which gave it the figure of a calf, and with his tool wrought it into a more agreeable form, he took off the roughness of it, and polished it; or if it was in imitation of the...

Matthew Henry - Complete Commentary

Matthew Henry

It is a very lamentable interruption which the story of this chapter gives to the record of the establishment of the church, and of religion among the Jews. Things went on admirably well towards that happy settlement: God had shown himself very favourable, and the people also had seemed to be pretty tractable. Moses had now almost completed his forty days upon the mount, and, we may suppose, was...

Spurgeon - Verse Expositions

Charles H. Spurgeon

And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a gravinq 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. No doubt they copied the Egyptian God, which was in the form of a bull, which the Holy Spirit, by the pen of Moses, here calls a calf. The psalmist probably also alludes to it when he speaks of “an...

Spurgeon - Verse Expositions

Charles H. Spurgeon

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. This was an Egyptian idolatry, the worship of God under the fashion of an ox, the emblem of strength; but God is not to be worshipped under emblems at all. What a poor representation of God any...