Weak men make hard times: The tragedy of Adam and Aaron
Two of the Bible’s early leaders, who knew better, actively partook in wrong. Their families and communities suffered for it.
“Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
In The Beginning, man was given lush gardens, free time, good company, and just one rule — don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden,” God tells Adam in Genesis 2:16. “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die,” God adds in Genesis 2:17.
Adam was given God’s word directly.
Yet when a serpent questions it in Genesis 3:4, Adam’s helpmate, Eve, is left to fend for herself. She’d been briefed on the rule, been told its stakes were literal life and death.
But when that point was challenged, Adam was not witness enough to speak God’s word. Genesis 3:6 tells us Adam was with Eve the whole time, though we never hear his voice.
When Adam and Eve fall, he blames his helpmate, and God for sending her: “The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Even if you believe The Fall is the point of the Bible — and indeed all of life, as I do — there’s no argument that Adam was told one thing by God, and did another. That’s sin.
Genesis 3:15 says there will be “enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
On Twitter this enmity manifests as the Battle of the Sexes. Mostly in arguments over who should pay the bills, or whether men should be subject to 8PM curfews. Having taken part in several, I can confirm this curse is real, and ongoing.
(Genesis 3:15 also pre-tells the Esau and Jacob story. When Isaac’s twin sons were born, Esau first, Jacob was grabbing his heel. More to come on this at a later date.)
We never see a pre-Fall pregnancy. And we never see anyone granted eternal life, before Adam is sentenced to “surely die.”
So the punishments that result — the woman will hurt in pregnancy, and man will work — have nothing to contrast against. It’s a shortcoming of the story.
For everybody we’ve ever met, or read about, this is life as we’ve known it. Fall from what? An Eden so lacking in teachable moments that the text spends no time there?
Still, the text presents The Fall as a punishment. Which would not have been necessary, but for that apple.
In a moment of truth, Adam failed to speak God’s word. It should be a lesson to us all.
It’s a lesson Aaron, high priest and Moses’s brother, apparently missed.
Because in Exodus 32, he makes the same mistake Adam did. The parallels between the two stories, between life in Eden and Israel’s Exodus, are staggering. The similar failures of Adam and Aaron are stunning, and tie the narratives fully together.
By Exodus 32, God has led Israel out of Egypt. He has passed down Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai.
But the Israelites remain true to their name. They struggle with God. And with patience.
While Moses “was so long in coming down from the mountain,” where he was talking to literal God, in the precursor to Heaven, the Israelites get ornery.
“Come, make us a god,” they demand of Aaron in Exodus 32:1 — by which they mean, make us an idol. This is in direct violation of the First and Second Commandment.
“As for this fellow Moses, who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him,” The Israelites said.
Tough crowd. Lest you think that short attention spans and what have you done for me lately? attitudes are a curse of modern times, Exodus 32 reminds us it’s always been this way.
Aaron, a priest, as close to God as anyone but Moses himself, knew better. He knew to tell the Israelites their desires are not just sinful, but idolatrously so — as bad as it gets.
Instead of leading, instead of speaking God’s word in a moment of truth, Aaron gives in to the crowd.
He collects the gold they had on hand and makes a golden calf from it. (One imagines this is the gold given the Israelites by Egyptians on their departure, in Exodus 12:35.)
The people not only worship the calf, which is bad. But they credit it with the very Exodus God engineered from Israel, which is worse.
God took great pride in the Exodus, which showed both Israel and its enemies his “mighty hand.”
So Exodus 32:8 — “There are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt,” the Israelites pray to the calf — had to come as a gut punch to God, who is watching it all.
The very story that serves as God’s binding agent with Israel — that against all odds, the Lord led them out of Pharaoh’s yoke — is now being credited to a golden calf. This all happened because they were bored.
And none of it could have happened but for the help of Aaron. A leader who knew better, but didn’t do better. Every time you see a leader do the popular-but-wrong thing, they’re following in Aaron’s footsteps.
Moses comes down the mountain and breaks the party up. He ruins the stone tablets that gave the law, burned the calf in the fire, ground it to powder, and made the people of Israel drink it. Hardcore.
When Moses confronts Aaron, Aaron does what Adam did: blame others.
“Do not be angry, my lord,” Aaron tells Moses in Exodus 32:22. “You know how prone these people are to sin.”
Adam and Aaron both use dissociative language, to point blame away from themselves. It’s the woman’s fault! These people (not our people, these people) are sinners!
This is as far as it gets from leadership.
Moses returns up the mountain, and talks God down from a Flood-type press of the reset button.
Instead, God settles for a 9/11.
The Levites, the house of Levi, strap swords to their side and “go back and forth through the camp from one end to the others each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.”
“The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about 3,000 of the people died,” reads Exodus 32:28.
After the purge, they’re hit with a plague.
Leaders push you to be better than yourself, better than your feelings.
You want to be a champion, but don’t feel like running today. Coach tells you to run anyway.
Not just because you want the championship, but because that’s how champions train. The coach who says “take the day off and order fast food” cannot be said to be leading.
Leaders get people to do the hard, right thing. At exactly the moment they’re tempted to do otherwise.
Neither Adam or Aaron led. And their communities suffered for it. Weak men made hard times.
Very appropriate for the current times! Thank you.