While Moses was receiving revelation from God on Mt Sinai, the Israelites camped at the foot of the mountain became more and more worried. Would Moses be coming back?
Eventually some large group of Israelites confronted Aaron, who was in charge in Moses' absence. When they "gathered themselves together to Aaron" (Ex 32:1). the Hebrew implies that this was a hostile gathering. Hur had been left in charge with Aaron (Ex 24:14), but he is not mentioned here, leading to a later tradition that this mob murdered Hur.
With Moses, their mediator before God, seemingly having disappeared, the mob seems to have wanted a replacement for Moses. Other peoples tried to deal with their gods by building images. After the image was built, there would be a ceremony designed to have the spirit of the god enter the idol. The god would then be "localized for purposes of worship and bargaining," as Michael Heiser puts in The Unseen Realm.
It is not made clear exactly what the mob was thinking. Whatever it was, it clearly violated the commandments God had stated aloud to them just weeks before. Jewish tradition wonders to what degree the mob was composed of members of the "mixed multitude" that now was joined to Israel. One midrash suggests that the mixed multitude were the "they" speaking to the Israelites in Ex 32:4.
When people begin to worship God on their terms rather than God's, anything can happen, and those who celebrated around the golden calf that Aaron made quickly got out of hand (v 6). God alerted Moses to what was going on and suggested that it might be appropriate to have the Israelites destroyed and start from scratch with Moses (vv 7-10)
God seems to have raised this suggestion as a test for Moses. (If he had really wanted to destroy the Israelites, he could have just done so.) Moses passed the test, arguing that the people should be spared by appealing to God's reputation and his covenant (vv 11-14).
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