“And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:”
Then the Lord said to Moses: go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. God's distancing language — your people, whom you brought up — expresses the covenant breach: withdrawal of the intimacy of possession. The corruption — shichet — is the same word for the earth's corruption before the flood in Genesis 6:12. The community is repeating the pre-flood catastrophe at the base of God's mountain, within weeks of the covenant they solemnly accepted in Exodus 24:3. The urgency of go down now matches the weight of the indictment.
COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS
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