Exodus 32:17

17 Now when the noise and the voices of the people came to the ears of Joshua, he said to Moses, There is a noise of war in the tents.

Exodus 32:17 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 32:17

And when Joshua heard the noise of the people, as they
shouted
Dancing about the calf: when Moses went up into the mount, Joshua went with him, and tarried in a lower part of the mount all the forty days until he returned, see ( Exodus 24:13 ) though not so low as the bottom of the mount where the people were, nor so near it as to know what they did there, for of their affairs he seems to be entirely ignorant; nor so high as where Moses was, or, however, not in the cloud where he conversed with God, for of what passed between them he had no knowledge, until declared by Moses:

he said unto Moses, [there is a] noise of war in the camp;
such a noise as soldiers make in an onset for battle; he supposed that some enemy was come upon and had attacked the people, and that this noise was the noise of the enemy, or of the Israelites, or both, just beginning the battle; or on the finishing of it on the account of victory on one side or the other; and as he was the general of the army, it must give him a concern that he should be absent at such a time.

Exodus 32:17 In-Context

15 Then Moses came down the mountain with the two stones of the law in his hand; the stones had writing on their two sides, on the front and on the back.

16 The stones were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, cut on the stones.

17 Now when the noise and the voices of the people came to the ears of Joshua, he said to Moses, There is a noise of war in the tents.

18 And Moses said, It is not the voice of men who are overcoming in the fight, or the cry of those who have been overcome; it is the sound of songs which comes to my ear.

19 And when he came near the tents he saw the image of the ox, and the people dancing; and in his wrath Moses let the stones go from his hands, and they were broken at the foot of the mountain.