He was the brother of Moses. He made the calf. He said it came out of the fire.
📖Based on Exodus 32:24
He had stood before Pharaoh.
He had spoken for his brother because his brother was slow of speech.
He had raised the staff and parted the sea with Moses.
He had been on the mountain and seen God.
He and Nadab and Abihu and seventy elders had eaten and drunk before God.
They had seen him and lived.
Moses went back up the mountain.
He was gone forty days.
The people gathered around Aaron.
They said make us gods.
Aaron said to bring the gold earrings.
They brought them.
He received the gold from their hand.
He fashioned it with a graving tool.
He made a golden calf.
He built an altar before it.
He announced a feast.
He presided over the worship of something his own hands had made.
When Moses came back and asked what the people had done to him, Aaron said:
You know the people, they are set on evil.
They said to me make us gods.
I said who has gold, let them take it off.
So they gave it to me and I threw it into the fire.
And out came this calf.
He stood in front of an idol he had personally carved.
And said it came out on its own.
He had been left in charge of two million people.
He had yielded to the first pressure.
Then denied the yielding.
Then denied the craft.
He survived that day.
His sons Nadab and Abihu would later die for their own violation of the sacred.
He outlived them.
He died on the top of Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation.
With his priestly garments removed and placed on his son Eleazar.
Still the high priest.
Still serving.
Still carrying the memory of a fire into which he threw gold.
And the calf that came out.
Scripture — Exodus 32:24
"And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf."
Reflection
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He fashioned the calf with a graving tool and then told Moses it came out of the fire. He stood beside his own work and denied it.
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He had seen God face to face and made a calf with the same hands forty days later. Proximity to the holy is not immunity from failure.