to the patriarchs (Exo 32:13), and prayed that for His own sake, and the sake of His honour among the heathen, He would show mercy instead of justice. בּרעה (Exo 32:12) does not mean μετὰ πονεερίας, or callide (Vulg.), but “for their hurt,” - the preposition denoting the manner in which, or according to which, anything took place.
Verse 14
“And Jehovah repented of the evil, etc.” - On the repentance of God, see at Gen 6:6. Augustine is substantially correct in saying that “an unexpected change in the things which God has put in His own power is called repentance” (contra adv. leg. 1, 20), but he has failed to grasp the deep spiritual idea of the repentance of God, as an anthropopathic description of the pain which is caused to the love of God by the destruction of His creatures. - Exo 32:14 contains a remark which anticipates the development of the history, and in which the historian mentions the result of the intercession of Moses, even before Moses had received the assurance of forgiveness, for the purpose of bringing the account of his first negotiations with Jehovah to a close. God let Moses depart without any such assurance, that He might display before the people the full severity of the divine wrath.
verses 15-18
When Moses departed from God with the two tables of the law in his hand (see at Exo 31:18), and came to Joshua on the mountain (see at ch. Jos 24:13), the latter heard the shouting of the people (lit., the voice of the people in its noise, רעה for רעו, from רע noise, tumult), and took it to be the noise of war; but Moses said (Exo 32:18), “It is not the sound of the answering of power, nor the sound of the answering of weakness,” i.e., they are not such sounds as you hear in the heat of battle from the strong (the conquerors) and the weak (the conquered); “the sound of antiphonal songs I hear.” (ענּת is to be understood, both here and in Psa 88:1, in the same sense as in Exo 15:21.)
Verse 19
But when he came nearer to the camp, and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned, and he threw down the tables of the covenant and broke them at the foot of the mountain, as a sign that Israel had broken the covenant.
Verse 20
He then proceeded to the destruction of the idol. “He burned it in (with) fire,” by which process the wooden centre was calcined, and the golden coating either entirely or partially melted; and what was left by the fire he ground till it was fine, or, as it is expressed in Deu 9:21, he beat it to pieces, grinding
