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Exodus 32:15
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13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You aswore by Your own self, and said to them, b‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ”  
14 So the Lord arelented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.  
15 And aMoses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written.  
16 Now the atablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.  
17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.”
18 But he said:
“It is not the noise of the shout of victory,
Nor the noise of the cry of defeat,
But the sound of singing I hear.”
19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that ahe saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.  
20 aThen he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.  
21 And Moses said to Aaron, a“What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”  
22 So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. aYou know the people, that they are set on evil.  
23 For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’
24 And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”
25 Now when Moses saw that the people were aunrestrained (for Aaron bhad not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies),  
26 then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him.
27 And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and alet every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’ ”  
28 So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day.
29 aThen Moses said,1 “Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”  
30 Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, a“You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord; bperhaps I can cmake atonement for your sin.”  
31 Then Moses areturned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have bmade for themselves a god of gold!  
Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
<< Exodus 32:14   Exodus 32:16 >>


Exodus 32:15

The tables were written on both their sides - If we take this literally, it was certainly a very unusual thing; for in ancient times the two sides of the same substance were never written over. However, some rabbins suppose that by the writing on both sides is meant the letters were cut through the tables, so that they might be read on both sides, though on one side they would appear reversed. Supposing this to be correct, if the letters were the same with those called Hebrew now in common use, the samech , which occurs twice, and the final mem which occurs twenty-three times in the ten commandments, both of these being close letters, could not be cut through on both sides without falling out, unless, as some of the Jews have imagined, they were held in by miracle; but if this ancient character were the same with the Samaritan, this through cutting might have been quite practicable, as there is not one close letter in the whole Samaritan alphabet. On this transaction there are the three following opinions:

1.We may conceive the tables of stone to have been thin slabs or a kind of slate, and the writing on the back side to have been a continuation of that on the front, the first not being sufficient to contain the whole.

2.Or the writing on the back side was probably the precepts that accompanied the ten commandments; the latter were written by the Lord, the former by Moses; see Clarke' s note on Exodus 34:1. See Clarke' s note on Exodus 34:27.

3.Or the same words were written on both sides, so that when held up, two parties might read at the same time.




Other Adam Clarke entries containing Exodus 32:15:

Exodus 31:18
Exodus 34:27
Deuteronomy 9:10
Acts 7:39

 

<< Exodus 32:14   Exodus 32:16 >>

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