Or HaChaim on Exodus 32:7/אור החיים על שמות ל״ב:ז׳

1 לך רד כי שחת עמך, "go and descend for your people have become corrupt, etc." G'd repeated Himself, saying both "go," and "descend!" He first told Moses that the time had come for him to leave the Mountain; He added that his departure would be in the nature of a "descent" from the lofty spiritual heights he had so recently attained. If G'd had only said to Moses: "Descend," we would have understood this as nothing out of the ordinary, seeing he had been on the Mountain and there was no way to go but down, just as when the Torah described Moses' previous descent from the Mountain in Exodus 19,14. G'd wanted Moses to understand that his "descent" had a metaphysical dimension. Perhaps G'd used this method to inform Moses that his entire spiritual progress had been due to the nature of the people of whom he was in charge. Now that the people of Israel had sinned, Moses, their leader, could no longer attain the level of prophetic insights he had achieved formerly. It is also possible that what G'd meant was that inasmuch as the Jewish people were Moses' "helper" and that helper had now become deficient, he, Moses could no longer maintain himself on the lofty plateau he had reached. This is what is implied by the words רד כי שחת עמך, "do not remain on this level seeing you attained it only with the help of your people."

2The difficulty with this approach is that G'd should have told Moses this as soon as the calf had emerged and the people had said: "these are your gods Israel, etc." Moses should have lost some of his spiritual stature the moment the people had become guilty of idol worship. We must assume that there was a good reason for G'd to delay informing Moses about the sin his people had committed. The Talmud Sanhedrin 43 raises the question why G'd did not inform Joshua of Achan's theft of valuables from the city of Jericho before the defeat of the Israelites at the hands of the people of Ai which prompted Joshua to ask G'd why they had suffered such a humiliating defeat (Joshua 7,6). The Talmud answers that G'd did not want to become known as an "informer," a "snitcher." If that argument were applicable here, G'd should not have told Moses about the people's sin until the latter had found out by himself a few hours later. After all, Moses' time on the Mountain was just about completed. Actually, the situation of Achan and the sin of the golden calf cannot be compared. Achan's sin was unknown except to a few people who kept it as their secret. The Jewish people's dancing around the golden calf and offering sacrifices to it was already public knowledge and Moses would have found out about it within hours even if G'd had not told him. Nonetheless, seeing G'd is the epitome of piety why did He tell Moses before the latter commenced his descent?

3G'd's reasoning must therefore have been the very reverse of that applied by an informer. The informer delights in implicating people in sin, whereas G'd delights in justifying Himself if per chance He is forced to pronounce sentence over the sinners. Seeing G'd had told Moses to descend from his lofty spiritual niveau, He had to tell him the reason for this, and once having told him that the people had become corrupted, G'd had to add particulars about the form this corruption had taken. G'd listed three sins: 1) "they made a golden calf for themselves;" 2) "they prostrated themselves before it and they offered sacrifices to it;" 3) they proclaimed: "these are your gods O Israel, who have brought you out of Egypt." Israel had therefore sinned in (1) thought, (2) in speech and (3) in deed. G'd first told Moses about Israel having sinned in thought when He said: "they have made for themselves, etc." This was a sin in thought as long as they had not hailed the calf or sacrificed to it. The critical word is להם, "for themselves." Please compare what I have written on Exodus 20,3 on the meaning of the second of the Ten Commandments: לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים. Concerning the Israelites' sin in deed, G'd told Moses that the people had "offered sacrifices to it." There is no greater act of idol worship than the offering of sacrifices to an idol. Concerning the Israelites having sinned in speech, G'd cited their having said: "these are your gods O Israel, etc." In view of all this Moses suffered a threefold weakening of his spiritual powers. Moses suffered a weakening of both נפש, רוח, and נשמה, and as a result he could not remain in the domain he had previously attained. This proves that unless the people had committed all three parts of this sin, Moses could have maintained his lofty posture. Had this not been so G'd would have already had to command him to descend after the Israelites had committed the first or second stage of that sin. G'd would then have had to reveal to Moses the reason He had asked him to descend at an earlier stage of these developments. At any rate, our question of why G'd did not tell Moses to descend sooner is answered satisfactorily.