Exodus 32:19
And when he came nigh to the camp, he saw the calf, and the dances: and being very angry, he threw the tables out of his hand, and broke them at the foot of the mount:
Open Exodus 32:19 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Cumque appropinquasset ad castra, vidit vitulum, et choros : iratusque valde, projecit de manu tabulas, et confregit eas ad radicem montis :
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἡνίκα ἤγγιζεν τῇ παρεμβολῇ, ὁρᾷ τὸν μόσχον καὶ τοὺς χορούς· καὶ ὀργισθεὶς θυμῷ Μωυσῆς ἔρριψεν ἀπὸ τῶν χειρῶν αὐτοῦ τὰς δύο πλάκας, καὶ συνέτριψεν αὐτὰς ὑπὸ τὸ ὄρος·
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַֽיְהִ֗י כַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר קָרַב֙ אֶל הַֽמַּחֲנֶ֔ה וַיַּ֥רְא אֶת הָעֵ֖גֶל וּמְחֹלֹ֑ת וַיִּֽחַר אַ֣ף מֹשֶׁ֗ה וַיַּשְׁלֵ֤ךְ מידו אֶת הַלֻּחֹ֔ת וַיְשַׁבֵּ֥ר אֹתָ֖ם תַּ֥חַת הָהָֽר
Haydock's commentary
Mount. "Finding the people abandoned to luxury and sacrilege, he broke the tables, deeming it a nation unworthy to be entrusted with the law of God." (Sulpitius i. 33.) By this action, Moses foreshewed the dissolution of the covenant with the Jews, that the new covenant might take place. (St. Augustine, q. 144.) The Jews kept the 17th of the fourth month as a fast, in memory of this event. (St. Jerome in Zac. viii.)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm LXXIV
13. What more after the heads of dragons? For those dragons have their chief, and he is himself the first great dragon. And concerning him what hath He done that hath wrought Salvation in the midst of the earth? Hear: “Thou hast broken the head of the dragon” ( ver. 14 ). Of what dragon? We understand by dragons all the demons that war under the devil: what single dragon then, whose head was broken, but the devil himself ought we to understand? What with him hath He done? “Thou hast broken the head of the dragon.” That is, the beginning of sin. That head is the part which received the curse, to wit that the seed of Eve should mark the head of the serpent. For the Church was admonished to shun the beginning of sin. Which is that beginning of sin, like the head of a serpent? The beginning of all sin is pride. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, Colossians 1:21,22
Although these things are really fit subjects for enquiry: yet not for a meddling curiosity: for this is not for enquiry at all. For I will tell you the reason I spoke of. For suppose human nature as being some one continued life, and that in the first times our race was in the position of boyhood; in those that succeeded, of manhood; and in these that are near extreme age, of an old man. Now when the soul is at its perfection, when the limbs of the body are unstrung, and our war is over, we are then brought to philosophy. On the contrary, one may say, we teach boys whilst young. Yes, but not the great doctrines, but rhetoric, and expertness with language; and the other when they are come to ripeness of age. See God also doing the same with the Jews. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).