Moses Gets Mad - A Modern Midrash
Sermon, March 17, 2006
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

Have you ever gotten angry, really angry?

What do you do when you are angry?

This Shabbat we read the story of someone who got very angry:  Moses.

Why did Moses get so angry?

Let me tell you the story.

After the Jews arrived at Mount Sinai, God told Moses to come up the mountain.  God had a special present for Moses a present that God wanted to present directly to him without anyone else watching. 

So Moses said good-bye to the people and went up the mountain.  He was gone for a day, and then another day, and then another day; pretty soon it was a week and then another week and then another week.

Well, the people started wondering.  Where was Moses?  What was he doing up there?  Would he ever come back? 

Now, when Moses went up the mountain, he had left his brother, Aaron, in charge.  Aaron tried his best to reassure the people.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  Moses will be back soon.  It takes a long time to get up to the top of the mountain, and Moses is no spring chicken; he probably stopped to rest a lot. 

And I am sure that God had a lot to say to him when he got up there; when God starts talking, he never seems to stop!

So, the people returned to what they were doing and –for a couple of days—forgot about Moses being gone.  But after a whole month had passed and there was no sign of him coming down the mountain, they started complaining again.

“Where is he?”  they asked.  Turning to Aaron, they said, “You told us that he would be back soon, but he is still gone.  We don’t think that he is ever coming back!”

Aaron again tried to reassure them that Moses would return, but he wondered to himself where Moses was.

Some of the people had had it by now and decided it was time to move on.  “We need a new leader; we are tired of waiting for Moses and his God.”   They went before Aaron and demanded that he make them a new god. 

Imagine for a moment that you were Aaron.  What would you do?  How would you respond to this unruly mob of people? 

Well, we know what Aaron did.  He told the people to remove the gold rings that were in the ears of their wives and daughters and sons (yes, in those days even the sons wore earrings!), and bring them to him.  He cast them in a mold and made them into a molten calf.

The people were ecstatic.  Tomorrow will be a holiday they proclaimed.  They ate and drank and celebrated and danced around the calf and said:  “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

Meanwhile, Moses was busy continuing to write down the words of God, all the while thinking to himself, “Enough already.  How many more laws is God going to come up with?”  Moses, of course, did not know what was happening, but God did.

Finally, God told Moses to stop writing, and quickly go down the mountain.  God said, “Your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, are misbehaving.  They have made a golden calf and are singing and dancing and bowing down to it.  I have had it with this people.  I think that I am going to wipe them out and start over again with you.”

“Wow,” thought Moses, “start over again with me.  That would be neat.”  But then he realized that there were a lot of people he would miss:  his brother Aaron and sister Miriam, not to mention his aunts and uncles and cousins and the guys he played poker with.

“Hold on a minute,” Moses said to God.”  “What do you mean my people?  They are Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and might.  What do You think that the Egyptians will say when they hear about this?  ‘God took the people out in order to destroy them!  Some God that is!’  And what about your promise to my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Abe and his son Isaac and his son Jake about making them a great nation and giving them the land of Israel.  You wouldn’t want to be known as a God who breaks promises now would you?”

“You have got a point there,” God responded.  Maybe I won’t wipe them out, but we have to do something about what they have done.  We can’t let them get away with breaking the commandment against idolatry.”

“Don’t worry,” said Moses.  “I’ll take care of it.”

So Moses stood up, picked up the Ten Commandments, and started down the mountain.  “Mmmm,” thought God.  “I wonder what Moses is going to do?”

As Moses hiked down the mountain he got angrier and angrier thinking about what the people had done.  And when he caught sight of the people dancing around the calf, he was livid. 

As he moved closer, a few of the people saw something on the mountain.  They started shouting and pointing, and soon all of the people were turned to the mountain.  They couldn’t believe their eyes.  Could it really be?  Yes, they realized.  It was Moses.

And boy was he mad.  His eyes were burning.  His nostrils were flaring.  His face was red.  Suddenly, he lifted the tablets that he was carrying overhead and smashed them on the ground.

The people were silent.  They couldn’t believe what they had just seen.  No one moved.  No one spoke.

Finally, Moses came closer, took a deep breath, and said:  “How dare you!  How dare you make that idol and sing and dance and make offerings to it!”  He took the calf and burned it up and ground its remains to a fine powder, and mixed it with water and made the people drink it.

Now, most of the people realized that they had sinned and they begged Moses’ forgiveness for what they had done.  But some of the people were still angry at Moses for abandoning them for so long and for destroying the calf they had made.  And the people began arguing and fighting with each other and before you knew it a lot of people had been killed.

“Stop,” shouted Moses.  “Fighting and killing each other won’t do any good.  You have indeed committed a great sin, but our God is a forgiving God.  Tomorrow I am going to go back up the mountain and ask God to forgive you for making the calf and singing and dancing around it.  And I am going to ask God to forgive me for breaking the tablets.  But don’t worry.  This time I won’t be gone for long.”

So, the next day Moses went back up the mountain, and said to God, “Please forgive the people for what they have done.  They have committed a great sin, but they are truly sorry for what they have done.  And, if you don’t forgive them, you can find someone else to lead them through the wilderness.”

God couldn’t think of anyone else who could lead the people.  “All right,” said God, “It’s a deal.  I will forgive them, but I will not forget what they have done.”

“Okay,” said Moses.  “And I want to ask you to forgive me for what I have done.  I shouldn’t have smashed to tablets (and made a mess), but I couldn’t think of any other way to be sure that they people would know how mad I was.”

“I will forgive you,” said God, “But I will not forget what you have done.  And the people shouldn’t forget either.  Tell them to pick up all of the pieces of the broken tablets and place them in the ark next to the new set of whole tablets.  Then whenever they open the ark and see the whole tablets they will also see the broken tablets and remember what they did to make you so mad.”

So Moses quickly made the new tablets, and turned to go down the mountain.  This time, when he saw the people, they were not singing or dancing.  They were repenting and offering sacrifices to God for the sin that they had committed.  Moses showed the new tablets to them and said, “God has forgiven you for what you have done.  Here is another set of tablets with Ten of God’s commandments on them.  I am going to put them in the ark that we have made.  But we also have to pick up all of the pieces of the broken tablets and put them in the ark next to the whole tablets, so when we open the ark we will remember that I got mad when I saw you worshipping the golden calf.

So the Israelites continued on their journey through the wilderness with the ark containing the whole tablets and the broken tablets; and whenever they looked at the broken tablets they did indeed remember what they had done and made sure that they never made that same mistake again.

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