Or HaChaim on Exodus 32:10/אור החיים על שמות ל״ב:י׳

1 ועתה הניחה לי, "And now, let Me be, etc." The reason G'd said: "and now," was because He had already tried to put Moses in a good mood by offering to make an entire new Jewish nation with Moses as its founding patriarch when He said to him: "and I shall make you a great nation." This promise was designed to silence Moses into not protesting G'd's intention to destroy the present Jewish people. Moses thought to himself that G'd's promise was hardly any reassurance seeing that what happened to Abraham's descendants was liable to happen to his own descendants with similarly terrible results. This is why G'd said to Moses that he should leave Him be only "for now;" G'd implied that if Moses would leave Him alone now He would promise Moses that history would not repeat itself with any of Moses' descendants if he were to become the founding father of a new Jewish nation. There could be either one of two reasons why history would not repeat itself. 1) Moses' descendants would be more virtuous than the present generation of Jews and they would not succumb to the kind of provocation by Satan that the present Jewish people had succumbed to. 2) Even assuming that the "new" Jewish people would succumb to a situation similar to that facing the present one, G'd would not again ask Moses or their leader at that time not to intercede on their behalf. There would always be a chance to nullify any decree of G'd to destroy the new Jewish people.

2A moral-ethical approach to the words הניחה לי would be that it was G'd's way of hinting that if Moses were to allow G'd a brief moment of anger, i.e. ועתה הניחה לי, there was a chance that his subsequent intercession would prove successful. As soon as the present moment had passed Moses was invited, so to speak, to intercede on behalf of "his" people. This brief moment had passed while G'd uttered the word ועתה. This is why Moses immediately began to intercede with prayer.

3According to our sages in Bereshit Rabbah 21,6 who say that the word ועתה in Genesis 3,22 as well as elsewhere always contains an allusion to the need to do תשובה, repentance, G'd hinted to Moses that it was up to him to do תשובה. Seeing that the entire debacle was due to Moses' having told the people he would return at the end of forty days he had misled them. He had failed to inform the people that he referred to a return on the forty-first day.

4Alternatively, Moses needed to do תשובה for having accepted the mixed multitude as proselytes at the time without having first consulted G'd. This is why G'd referred to the perpetrators of the golden calf as Moses' people, i.e. שחת עמך. When G'd said: ועתה, He meant that the time had come for Moses to become a penitent seeing he had a considerable share in the circumstances which made the golden calf episode possible. Not only this, the episode was to teach the Jewish people not to accept proselytes at the time when the Messiah would come (Yevamot 24). At that time it would be reserved for Moses to accept the proselytes and thus to make up for the time he had accepted them without authority from G'd.

5הניחה לי ויחר אפי, "leave Me alone so I can become angry, etc." Why did G'd have to ask Moses to "leave Him alone?" Had Moses done anything to prevent G'd from venting His anger? On the contrary! Moses had not even commenced to pray on behalf of the Israelites until later! Besides, the future tense "so that I may vent My anger" suggests that up until that moment G'd had not even become angry as yet and that He was looking for a pretext to become angry! Since when is it one of G'd's characteristics to want to become angry? We know that it is G'd's virtue to squash His anger whenever possible! We have it on the authority of Rabbi Yishmael the High Priest that G'd was pleased with his prayer asking Him to suppress His anger! (Berachot 7). Perhaps this was precisely Moses' argument when he remonstrated with G'd saying: למה יחרה אפך, "why do you want to become angry?" Moses uses the future tense in this question, suggesting that up until that point G'd had not shown signs of being angry. At any rate we are faced here with a difficulty in understanding the ways of our Lord!

6The whole matter may become clearer when we recall that the source of anger is an insult felt by one's heart. The degree of insult one experiences is in direct relation to the prominence and high position of the one who is guilty of the insult and the nature of the insult itself. There are two possible remedies which help one overcome the feeling of having been insulted. 1) One may take revenge on the person or persons who have insulted him. 2) One may respond to words of conciliation which puts the insult into its proper perspective.

7Inasmuch as the guilty party in this case was Israel, the insult could not have been greater seeing that Israel was G'd's chosen people. G'd Himself had indicated this by saying: "they have departed quickly from the path, etc." i.e. while Israel was still My most recently wed bride it has already abandoned Me, its groom, by whoring around. Initially, G'd felt so strongly about this that He did not think that any of the conventional ways of putting the insult into perspective would be effective and He had to take punitive action to get the feeling out of His system, so to speak. According to our sages in Shemot Rabbah 2,1 it is one of G'd's virtues that He cannot tolerate seeing His righteous people, His "friends," suffer pain. Accordingly, how could G'd inflict the pain of destroying His people on Moses? Had He not waited with the onset of the deluge so that Methuselah, a righteous man and others like him should not witness it (compare Bereshit Rabbah 32,7)? Moreover, according to the Zohar volume 1 page 206 the use of the term נשמה in Genesis 7,22 indicates that all the few good people, those possessed not only of a נפש, but even of a נשמה (a superior kind of soul), had died prior to the onset of the deluge. We also find in Isaiah 57,2 that the righteous person dies on account of the evil (which is to come). The prophet means that G'd spares the righteous the need to witness the disaster. Surely G'd was perfectly aware of how Moses would grieve over the destruction of his people! How could He even contemplate this type of revenge (retribution) for the insult He had suffered at the hands of the Jewish people? Had there ever been someone closer to G'd than Moses that he should have to witness such a disaster? When G'd considered all this and concluded that it would be better for Him to suffer the insult than to allow Moses to suffer the anguish of seeing his people destroyed, He begged Moses to allow Him to at least become angry for a moment. He asked Moses not to be upset at what He asked of him. If Moses agreed, this would give G'd an opportunity to first become angry and then regain His composure. He suggested that He would make out of Moses (his offspring in the future) לגוי גדול; He did not say He would make Moses himself into גוי גדול. This meant that though Moses was not at that moment a "great nation," He, G'd, would see to it that Moses' soul would possess the additional qualities needed to ensure that his descendants would be greater than the present Jewish people. The word אעשה also implied that G'd had to undertake a new process in order for future children of Moses to have the potential implied here.

8G'd also wanted to ward off Moses's argument (not yet voiced) "where is Your promise to the patriarch Abraham, i.e. the גוי גדול, the great nation that You promised he would become?" He used the expression לגוי גדול to paraphrase His promise to Abraham in Genesis 12,2 suggesting that this very promise would be fulfilled via the descendants of Moses.

9Moses' answer indicated that he could not allow G'd to do as He had suggested and that he could not conquer his own anguish even for a moment at what G'd planned to let him witness. Moses expressed all this succinctly in the words ויחל משה in verse 11. The Talmud Berachot 32 gives a variety of explanations of the word ויחל, the common denominator of all these explanations being that it is an expression of profound anguish. [The word ויחל is variously connected to חלה to be sick, as connected to חלל, to desecrate, i.e. to violate one's promise; another meaning is the aramaic אחילו, fever or trembling. There are still other interpretations. Ed.] In response to G'd saying: ויחר אפי, "so that My anger will be hot against them," an argument used by G'd to explain that He had no alternative if He wanted to get over the insult heaped upon Him, Moses countered: למה יחרה אפך, "why should You become angry instead of looking for a different method of assuaging Your hurt feelings?" By referring to the Jewish people as בעמך, "against Your people," Moses suggested that killing the Jewish people would "boomerang," that G'd would hurt Himself more than He would hurt the Israelites. After all, You have taken them out of Egypt and thereby made a great name for Yourself amongst mankind. Are You going to let all this go to waste? Why would You give the Egyptians such satisfaction? Moreover, why do You not remember Your promises to the Patriarchs? When You think about the Patriarchs surely You have reason to be well pleased? Moses succeeded in his plea as we know from the line וינחם ה׳ על הרעה, "G'd reconsidered the evil, etc."