Or HaChaim on Exodus 32:6/אור החיים על שמות ל״ב:ו׳

1 וישכימו ממחרת, They rose up early on the morrow, etc. It is difficult to understand why G'd did not tell Moses to descend from the Mountain as soon as the golden calf emerged from the crucible instead of waiting until the following morning after the people began to worship it by offering sacrifices in its honour. If G'd had told Moses to descend as soon as the calf emerged the people would not have had a chance commit the sin of offering sacrifices to a man-made idol. We cannot assume that the Torah did not report this in chronological order and that G'd did indeed tell Moses to descend at once but that Moses delayed his descent in order to try and diminish G'd's anger at His people. The report of the Torah spoke first about the people offering sacrificing to the calf before it mentions G'd as having become angry and telling Moses to descend. [Verse seven only supplies the reason for what is written in verses eight and nine. It does not represent the order in which things happened. Ed.] While we are aware of the statement by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi in Avodah Zarah 4 that "the children of Israel were not on a low enough spiritual level at the time to make the golden calf, and that the only reason this was allowed to occur was to teach future generations of Jews the power of repentance," this statement would not have lost any of its validity if G'd had interfered before it came to the point when the people actually offered sacrifices to that calf. G'd could have told Moses to descend as soon as some of the people had said: "these are your gods, O Israel, who have brought you up from Egypt." All this occurred on the day before they offered the sacrifices. The people's passive attitude to the idolatrous provocation by the mixed multitude had already made them sufficiently culpable. In fact we can be certain that there were only a few dissidents amongst the natural-born Israelites for if they had indeed been the majority their passive acceptance of such a provocation to sin is totally beyond imagination! If a majority who were physically able to prevent this sin had stood by idly, they would have become guilty as accessories. Why did G'd have to wait until after offerings had been made to the golden calf?

2We may have to look for the answer to our question in Exodus 24, 12-18 when G'd had invited Moses to come up on the Mountain and to remain there (for 40 days) until G'd would give him the Torah, the commandments which He had written down in order for Moses to teach to the people. After the 40 days Moses was to give the people the Tablets (compare Shabbat 89 on this sequence). The word בשש which alluded to the time of Moses' return made it difficult for G'd to have Moses return earlier. I will explain the expression רד which the Torah uses in verse seven when we deal with that verse. Even though G'd was aware of what was going to occur already from the demands made by the people on Aaron, He would not go back on His instruction to Moses to remain on the Mountain for forty days and nights.

3You may well ask that seeing G'd is omniscient, why did He not consider future events at the time He invited Moses for forty days? I have already referred to this problem in my commentary on Genesis 6,5. As far as the situation facing us here is concerned we do not even need to trouble ourselves to find an answer as the Torah has already provided it. There are some reasons which only G'd knows about, but He has revealed to us the significance of the number forty regarding the days it takes for the development of a human embryo. Whereas the entire universe was created in six days, it required forty days to "create" the Tablets. We may be better able to understand this by recalling a lesson taught by Rabbi Yochanan to Rabbi Chiya bar Abba quoted in Shemot Rabbah 47,5. Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Chiya walked from Tiberias to Tzippori. Rabbi Yochanan saw a certain vineyard and told Rabbi Chiya that the vineyard used to be his, but that he had sold it for a certain sum of money. Upon hearing this Rabbi Chiya started to cry and said to Rabbi Yochanan: "have you not left yourself anything to provide for your old age?" Rabbi Yochanan replied: "Do you consider the fact that I sold something which it took six days to create and traded it for something that it took G'd forty days to create as 'nothing?' G'd created the entire universe in six days and yet it took Him forty days before He could give the Torah to Moses? Moses ate neither bread nor drank water but he was able to subsist on the waters of Torah, etc."

4Another reason that G'd could not tell Moses to descend before the Israelites had already offered sacrifices to the golden calf is connected to the four levels of Torah exegesis, commonly known as Pardess, an acronym for Peshat, Remez, Drush, and Sod. These four methods of exegesis actually reflect four different functions of "light" in the universe. It is the function of the פשט to illuminate the עולם העשיה, the lowest world, the physical universe as we know it. The function of the רמז is to provide insights into the world known in Kabbalah as the עולם היצירה. The function of the דרוש is to provide illumination of the world known as עולם הבריאה. Finally, it is the function of the exegesis known as סוד, to help us gain some enlightenment about the world known as עולם האצילות, a world in which tangible phenomena are totally non- existent. We have explained on several occasions that every one of these "worlds" contains ten levels known as ספירות, emanations. G'd is perceived as having "created" one such level of Torah per day and to have taught it to Moses. Thus you have the number forty as the number of days which were required in order for Moses to gain a full understanding of the Torah. Had Moses descended from the Mountain even a single day earlier, he (and we) would have been deprived of some of the insights the Torah provides. Expressed differently, the Torah would then have remained defective. At any rate, the ways of G'd are sometimes inscrutable but always fair and just. When you will read what we have written on the following verse you will see that we have pursued a different approach there.