making excuses

Parshat Ki Tisa

In 32:10,11 Hashem decides He wishes to kill out the Jewish people and start over from scratch from Moshe.

How does Moshe respond to this?

He did not make excuses for the people. He did not try to rationalize what they had done. He could have argued that they made a mistake, they were led to believe Moshe was dead, they just wanted a middleman between them and God, etc. All sorts of excuses.

But he did not.

What did he do?

He right away requested a pardon. He says, it will not look good for You to destroy them. What will the Egyptians say? The forefathers? etc. In the end his arguments calmed Hashem down (so to speak).

If your boss (for example) aproaches you with a problem, often our initial response is to try to pass the blame. We make excuses. We try to weasel out of it.

Moshe shows us that accepting the facts is the right way to face the issues. Face the facts and find a way to get around and/or solve the problem. Don't make silly excuses.

Aharon, on the other hand, we see later in 32:22,23 making excuses for his participation in the affair. He should have learned from Moshe and taken the blame for what he did and moved on. Instead he got punished for it.