GM4: The Biblical Passages (Exodus 32:26-29)

This post is part of the series; God: Merciful? Maniac? Mass-Murderer? (GM4) and belongs to the subthread GM4’s treatment of the Biblical materials

Exodus 32:26-29

So he [Moses] stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, “All of you who are on the Lord’s side, come here and join me.” And all the Levites gathered around him. Moses told them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Each of you, take your swords and go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other. Kill everyone—even your brothers, friends, and neighbors.” The Levites obeyed Moses’ command, and about 3,000 people died that day. Then Moses told the Levites, “Today you have ordained yourselves for the service of the Lord, for you obeyed him even though it meant killing your own sons and brothers. Today you have earned a blessing.”

At first blush, this looks pretty damning as far as God is concerned, but the story is actually a far more interesting one than this small snippet indicates. When we look at the narrative, we find that we have a small story within a story here. The larger story involves God interacting with Moses, the small story involves Moses interacting with the Israelites. You’ll need to bear with me because this is likely to be longish, but if you want the short story: GM4 has omitted the crucial opening verse from the above in which we are told that “Moses saw that Aaron had let the people get completely out of control, much to the amusement of their enemies” (v.25). This collapse of order, rather than idolatry  or a divine command, is given as the motive behind Moses’ actions. Verse 25, it turns out, is a critical antecedent to the “so” of verse 26.