ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף שמות 24:14

ויקהל העם על אהרון. The people gathered around Aaron. The expression על אהרון needs further analysis. If it had been the people's intention merely to speak to Aaron, the Torah should have written: ויקהל העם ויאמרו אל אהרון, "the people gathered and spoke to Aaron." Perhaps the meaning here is that the people gathered in order to kill Aaron, that they said to him: "get up and make for us a deity or we will kill you." Our sages in Sanhedrin 7 have stated that the people had already killed Chur, and this would reinforce our assumption that the people gathered against Aaron. The reason that the text does not refer explicitly to the killing of Chur is so that this murder should not remain as a permanent memory for all future generations. G'd is protective of the good reputation of the Jewish people, and the only reason He recorded the details of the sin of the golden calf is so that if a community would commit a collective sin in the future they would be encouraged to repent using the fact that G'd forgave the Jewish people the sin of the golden calf as proof that their repentance too would be accepted by Him (compare Avodah Zarah 5). Perhaps the Torah did indeed allude to the killing of Chur in Exodus 24,14 where Chur together with Aaron is reported as having been left in charge of the Jewish people when Moses ascended the Mountain. The fact that Chur's name is not mentioned at this point begs the question of "what has happened to him?" Clearly he had been murdered. This matter is alluded to more forcefully in Jeremiah 2,34: גם בכנפיך נמצאו דם נפשות, אביונים נקיים, "also on your garments is found the life-blood of the innocent poor, etc." as pointed out in Vayikra Rabbah 10,3. According to that Midrash, the people killed Chur because he was unwilling to make an idol for them. The people may have interpreted Chur's unwillingness to comply with their request to make a substitute for Moses as proof that he himself had aspirations to take the place of Moses, i.e. to be the people's intermediary between them and G'd. It is quite possible that Jeremiah 2,35 supports the view that the people who killed Chur considered him guilty of the sin of wanting to take the place of Moses, something that made him guilty of a capital offence in their view. They actually considered a human being as an intermediary between them and G'd as a geater threat to monotheism than the appointment of a symbol such as a golden calf which lacked any faculties and any will of its own.

כי בשש משה [AND WHEN THE PEOPLE SAW] THAT MOSES DELAYED LONG — Understand (בשש as the Targum does, as an expression denoting “lateness”.. Similar are: (Judges 5:28) “[Why is] his chariot so long (בשש) [in coming]?”; (Judges 3:25) “And they waited until it was late (עד בוש)”. For when Moses ascended the mountain he said to them (to the Israelites): at the end of a period of forty days (i. e. on the fortieth day) I shall return during the first six hours of the day (before noon). They thought that the day on which he ascended the mountain (the seventh of Sivan) was to be included in this number (thus — Sivan having 30 days — he was expected back before noon on the sixteenth of Tammuz). In fact, however, he had said to them “after forty days” meaning complete days — forty days, each day together with its night that precedes it — (as is the customary Jewish reckoning; cf. Genesis 1:5: ויהי ערב ויהי בקר). Now, as regards the day of this ascent, its night was not part of it that it can be reckoned as a complete day, for he ascended on the seventh of Sivan early in the morning (cf. Rashi on Exodus 19:3); it follows therefore that the fortieth day really fell on the seventeenth of Tammuz and not as the people had believed on the sixteenth. On the sixteenth of Tammuz Satan came and threw the world into confusion, giving it the appearance of darkness, gloom and disorder that people should say: “Surely Moses is dead, and that is why confusion has come into the world!” He said to them, “Yes, Moses is dead, for six hours (noon) has already come (בשש = ‎בא שש) and he has not returned etc.” — as is related in Treatise Shabbat 89a (cf. Rashi and Tosafot there and Tosafot on Bava Kamma 82a ד"ה כדי). One cannot, however, say that they erred only on account of it being a cloudy day, their mistake consisting in not being able to distinguish between forenoon and afternoon, and that thus they were correct in their supposition that he was to return on the sixteenth of Tammuz; for this assumes that he really returned on the day when they made the calf, but that they were under the impression that noon was past — for, as a matter of fact, Moses did not come down until the following day (the day after they had made the calf), for it is said (v. 6) “And they rose up early in the morrow, and brought up burnt offerings”— and only after wards the Lord said to Moses (v. 7) “Go, go down; for thy people … have corrupted themselves”.

אשר ילכו לפנינו [MAKE US GODS] WHICH SHALL GO BEFORE US — They wished to have many gods (the words אלהים is to be taken as plural since the verb ילכו is plural; cf. Sanhedrin 63a).

כי זה משה האיש FOR AS FOR THIS MOSES — This Moses implies that Satan showed them something that looked like Moses being carried on a bier in the air high above in the skies (cf. Shabbat 89a).

אשר העלנו מארץ מצרים [THAT MAN] THAT BROUGHT US UP OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, and who used to show us the way we had to go; now that he is dead we need gods which shall go before us.