Unfortunately, freeing the Israelites from sin's enslavement will require more plagues.
God visits them with a plague because they worship an idol. The specifics of the plague go unrecorded. Was it something new? Or something they'd witnessed in Egypt and so a reminder? Boils again? How cold they have broken the covenant in just 40 days? How could you get all the way from the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea and manna and quail and the pillar of smoke and the fire and the angel leading the army all the way to "Let's make an idol?" What tact did Satan take? Was there a rumor floating around the camp that Moses was dead on Sinai? What changed their hearts or their minds and then their hearts? I wish I knew more of the story. And more of the story about the Levites running through the camp and killing people and being blessed for doing it. Another strange, strange story. This is forgiveness?
It's almost as if the writer here laments the destruction of the tablets by Moses. "They were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets." (Exodus 32:15) Think of it. God's handwriting. I wonder what a handwriting expert would have deduced from God's writing? Was He a lefty?
Oh, and here we're finally let in on an answer to one of the questions I posed a few days ago -- how the Lord speaks when He's not thundering around in a cloud for effect.
"The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." (Exodus 33:11)
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