Augustine of Hippo : As the Scripture says before Aaron rampaged the people, we can rightly ask why no punishment is applied to him, nor when Moses commanded to kill everyone who found the Levites when going from door to door armed by the camp, nor when later what the Scripture says happened: And the Lord punished the people for the making of the calf that Aaron did (Exodus 32,35), especially considering that here the same thing is emphasized, repeating the same idea. Indeed, the Scripture does not say: And the Lord punished the people for the making of the calf which they had made, but Aaron did. And yet, Aaron is not punished. Moreover, what God had ordained about his priesthood before committing that sin was fulfilled. But God commanded that he and his children wash themselves. And in this way they received priestly ordination. God knows who he forgives until he changes for the better, and also knows who he forgives temporarily, even though he knows in advance that he is not going to change for the better, and he also knows who does not forgive, so that he can change for the better, and knows who does not forgive so he does not even wait for his change. And all this comes from what the Apostle says with admiration: How unsearchable are his judgments and searchable his ways! 149 (Exodus 33.1). Come on, come up from here, you and your people, that you brought from the land to Egypt. God, angry, seems to say: You and your people, that you took. Because, otherwise, he would have said: You and my people that I brought from the land to Egypt. They, when they asked for the idol, said: Well, to Moses, this man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what happened to him. (Exodus 32,1.23) They had failed to entrust their release to a man. God replies to them: You and your people, which you brought out of the land of Egypt, which is a matter of reprobation for them, not for Moses. For Moses did not intend anything other than to place his hope in the Lord, not in him, and to believe that they had been freed from that bondage by the mercy of the Lord, to give him thanks for it. But the merit of Moses before God, as his most faithful servant, was so great by the grace of God, that God said to him: Leave me, and I will destroy them with anger. In relation to this word: Leave me, it seems absurd to think that it is the expression of both the one who commands and the one who begs. Because if God sent him, the servant in his rebellion did not obey, and then it was not convenient for God to ask this to his servant, as if it were a favor, especially considering that God could destroy them, although the servant did not I would want it. Therefore, the meaning that this text has there is clear, since God made it clear with those words that he took great advantage of that people in his presence the fact that he loved them so much, the man whom the Lord loved so much that he warned us in this way, telling us that, when our sins weigh us down to the point that we are not loved by God, we can be represented before him by the merits of those whom God loves. Because when the Almighty says to man: Leave me, and I will destroy you, what else does he say but he would kill them if they were not loved by you? Therefore, the text says: Leave me, as if I wanted to say: Do not love them and I will end them, because your love for them intercedes before me so that it does not. But one would have to obey the Lord if he had said: "do not love them." If he had said this as a mandate and not simply as an admonition and as a way of expressing that he would be relieved from applying the punishment, he would have to be obeyed. In any case, he did not leave the people without the scourge of punishment, despite the intercession of Moses. I do not know in what way, but God, who expressly terrified them with his voice, loved them in a more mysterious way, so that Moses loved them that way. 150 (Exodus 33.1). God says to Moses: Go on up from here, you and your people, that you brought from the land of Egypt, to the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, "I will give it to your descendants." In saying this, immediately, as if still talking to Moses by a hidden conversion, which in Greek is called apostrophe, he addresses the people already in these terms: At the same time I will send my angel before you and expel the Canaanite, and the Amorite, and to the Hittite, and to the Perizzite, and to the Girgash, and to the Jiveo, and to the Jebusite, and he will take you to a land flowing with milk and honey. I will not go up with you, for you are a stiff-necked people, lest I destroy you on the way (Exodus 33,2.3). There is an extraordinary, admirable and profound mystery here, since it seems that the angel could have a greater mercy than the Lord, since the angel would forgive a stiff-necked people; God, if I went with them, I would not forgive them. In spite of everything, although God is somehow absent from them, he, who can not be absent anywhere, says that he will also fulfill what he swore to his parents through his angel. He seems to want to show here, too, that he does this precisely because he promised it to those righteous fathers, not because these now were worthy. What does it mean but it is not with them just because they are stiff-necked men, since God does not make him more propitious and savior than humility and piety? Well, to say that God is with stiff-necked men is merely to affirm that He is with them to correct and punish them. Therefore, when God is not in that way with the bad, he is forgiving them. And this is confirmed by the text that says: Turn your face away from my sins (Ps. 50,11). Because if you put it aside, it destroys them; for as the wax melts before the fire, so sinners perish before God (Ps. 67,3). — QUESTIONS ON EXODUS, Q. 148 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)