We have become used to broken promises, from political leaders reneging on manifesto pledges to advertisers selling us products or services that fail to live up to the hype. So should we lower our expectations and no longer be surprised when a promise is not kept?
This is a question we grapple with as we read in this week’s parsha, Ki Tissa, about the worst sin that the people could have committed. Standing at the foot of Mt Sinai, waiting for Moses to return with the Ten Commandments, the Jewish people gathered around Aharon and demanded: “Make us gods that will go before us.” Despite Aharon’s attempts to stall them, they fashioned the Golden Calf.
Can you imagine doing anything worse, at that time and in that place? It is like a rabbi going away for a month and returning a day later than expected to find people eating bacon sandwiches in his shul!
Therefore, we can understand why God reacts angrily and tells Moses: “Go down, for your people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned away from the path that I have commanded them; they have made themselves a molten calf. And they have bowed down before it, slaughtered sacrifices to it, and called it their god!”
In his anger, God is emphatic that he will wipe out the entire people and start again to build a great nation. But Moses pleads on behalf of the people and, knowing that the very survival of the nation depends on it, he employs every possible argument. His chief defence was to say to God: “Remember Avraham, Yitzchak and Yisrael, to whom you swore yourself and said, ‘I will multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens, and all this land which I said that I would give to your seed, they shall keep it as their possession forever.’’’
Rashi quotes the Midrash to explain Moses’ case. He emphasised to God that he himself had made a promise, sworn an oath to our ancestors and that destroying the entire Jewish nation would be in violation of his oath to our forefathers to multiply their offspring and grant them the Land of Israel as an inheritance.
Although it could be argued that the sin of the Golden Calf meant the people had forfeited their rights and voided the covenant, God’s hands were tied as he had made a promise which could not be broken. Therefore, God relented and the people were saved.
Despite how critical a condition the Jewish people were in at that moment, with their very survival in the balance, there is one simple point that emerges from this whole episode: a promise is a promise. If you make a promise, you cannot break it, you must keep it, even if you are God and your people have committed a terrible sin, you still have to keep it.
In the most dramatic way, here we are reminded that we must never underestimate the importance of keeping our promises.
