(6 of 8)
One modern Torah commentary provides a map listing eight possible locations for Mount Sinai, two of which are not even in the Sinai peninsula. Wherever it was, however, God called to Moses from it, restating his ancient promise that Israel "shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples." Moses leads his followers to the foot of the mountain where God begins to speak to them. They tremble. "You speak to us and we will obey," they tell Moses,"but let not God speak to us, lest we die." God complies, Moses ascends and verbally receives what the ancient rabbis called the "10 pearls," which he reports to the Israelites. In a ritual similar to contemporary Hittite and Assyrian treaties between a King and his vassals, the Israelites then swear their loyalty to the Lord. God bids Moses to ascend again, this time for 40 days, to receive "the stone tablets" written by God's very finger.
In The Hidden Book in the Bible, Richard Elliot Friedman notes that there may have been two separate versions of the commandments: one ritual and one ethical. The ethical list is the one that we have become familiar with. The ritual version includes such commandments as "You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice on anything leavened" and "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk."
They have made themselves a molten calf.
This is Israel's appalling nadir. Yet it sets up Moses' finest hour. Seeing the calf from afar, God makes Moses a chilling offer: "Now, let me be, that my anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation," an echo of the murderous deal extended to Noah at the Flood. Moses, however, will not have it. He argues that such a course would render empty God's grand statement in bringing his people out of Egypt; it would also violate the compact he made long ago with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Moses strategically inserts in his argument an echo of the Noah story reminding God that he has sworn off this sort of thing. Astoundingly, God backs down. Moses returns to camp and, seeing the calf himself for the first time, smashes the tablets and has 3,000 of the idolatrous revelers killed. He then returns to God and shows an immense and compassionate courage: "Now, if you will forgive their sin [well and good]; but if not, erase me from the record which you have written!"
Rather than erase him, God rewards him. At Moses' request, God agrees to reveal himself to Moses. "But, you cannot see my face," he explains. But "see there is a place near me. Station yourself on the rock and, as my Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with my hand." Moses will be able to see him from behind. It is not until later that Moses realizes the full consequence of this experience. Returning to his people, he notices that "they shrank from coming near him": his face has taken on a terrible radiance, an emanation that causes him to wear a veil for the rest of his life except when announcing the Lord's will.
The golden-calf sequence is in many ways the high point of Moses' career. Gone is the stuttering shepherd, replaced by a mighty leader who bears some of the marks of divinity. Never again in the Hebrew Bible will any human attain the fond intimacy of being helped into place and protected by the Almighty's gentle hand.