Moses sees the Children of Israel worshipping the Golden Calf

Moses sees the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf

After the Children of Israel had been delivered by the Power of God from slavery in Egypt they committed a great sin.  (Probably a bunch of sins actually)  They were waiting while Moses went up to the Holy Mountain and got inpatient.  They said that Moses was not coming back and they had Moses' brother Aaron construct a golden calf.  They then began offering sacrifices and partying around the golden calf.  The Bible says that they rose up to play.  This may well have included fertility rituals with exotic dancing that they had seen from the Egyptians.  In any case, God is not against physical intimate relations between man and wife, in fact it is one of the first commandments He gave Adam and Eve...but God DOES object to intimate relations between unmarried people or between people who are married to someone else.  The people were also saying something like, "These be the gods that took us out of Egypt."  That would be defying God, since HE is who freed the Children of Israel from Pharaoh and the Egyptians....not some dumb idol. You may notice that one woman, clearly unwillingly, was placed on the alter to possibly be sacrificed.  The Bible does not say that the people were making human sacrifices to the golden calf, however, many, many, many  generations later the Israelites DID do human sacrifices to idol gods...so God smote them with the destruction of their civilization and years of captivity. 

So, when Moses saw the worshiping of the golden calf, and the people denying the power of God, and the immorality taking place around it I think Moses was stunned.  I show him in this drawing leaning against a tree in temporary shock.  I also drew Moses a little bigger than perspective would say to use because I wanted to emphasize him as a Spiritual Giant, (although not a physical giant).

After this Moses broke the tablets, destroyed the golden calf, and punished the people.  The tribe of  Levi did not worship the golden calf.  They were commanded by Moses to slay some of the wicked people.  The movie The Ten Commandments has the ground opening up to kill the wicked but that did not happen in THIS case.  Later on it did and many wicked people, who were rebelling against God and His prophet Moses, were swallowed up in the Earth.   So the script writers of the movie really did know their Bible stories.  They just mixed up the facts some for dramatic effect.