Exodus 34:21 “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest. In plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. 22 You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year's end. 23 Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. 24 For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. 25 “You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover remain until the morning. 26 The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.”
The golden calf was a traumatic event in the journey from Egypt to the promised land. God had repeatedly provided and promised to be faithful and had offered His covenant with His people. Moses went back to God not only for new tablets, but a renewed hope of covenantal commitment on the part of his people. God made it even more clear that they were to remember He provided, and to avoid all the practices of the false idols around them. The last statement above was one of those very rituals, a barbaric taking of life from the young in pagan worship. In all they did (and we do) the spotlight shines on a faithful, loving God.
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