SEV Biblia, Chapter 32:20
Y tomó el becerro que habían hecho, y lo quemó en el fuego, y lo molió hasta reducirlo a polvo, que esparció sobre las aguas, y lo dio a beber a los hijos de Israel.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Exodus 32:20
Verse 20. He took the calf-and burnt-and ground it to powder, &c.] How truly contemptible must the object of their idolatry appear when they were obliged to drink their god, reduced to powder and strewed on the water! "But," says an objector, "how could gold, the most ductile of all metals, and the most ponderous, be stamped into dust and strewed on water?" In Deuteronomy ix. 21, this matter is fully explained. I took, says Moses, your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, that is, melted it down, probably into ingots, or gross plates, and stamped it, that is, beat into thin laminae, something like our gold leaf, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust, which might be very easily done by the action of the hands, when beat into thin plates or leaves, as the original words tka eccoth and qd dak imply. And I cast the dust thereof into the brook, and being thus lighter than the water, it would readily float, so that they could easily see, in this reduced and useless state, the idol to which they had been lately offering Divine honours, and from which they were vainly expecting protection and defense. No mode of argumentation could have served so forcibly to demonstrate the folly of their conduct, as this method pursued by Moses.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 15-20 - What a change it is, to come down from the mount of communion with God to converse with a wicked world. In God we see nothing but what is pur and pleasing; in the world nothing but what is sinful and provoking That it might appear an idol is nothing in the world, Moses ground the calf to dust. Mixing this powder with their drink, signified that the backslider in heart should be filled with his own ways.
Original Hebrew
ויקח 3947 את 853 העגל 5695 אשׁר 834 עשׂו 6213 וישׂרף 8313 באשׁ 784 ויטחן 2912 עד 5704 אשׁר 834 דק 1854 ויזר 2219 על 5921 פני 6440 המים 4325 וישׁק 8248 את 853 בני 1121 ישׂראל׃ 3478
