Exodus 32:17

17 And Joshua heard the sound of the people in their shouting, and he said to Moses, "A sound of war [is] in the camp."

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 And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the testimony [were] in his hand, tablets written on their two sides; {on the front and on the back} they were written.

16 And the tablets, they [were] the work of God; and the writing, it [was] the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

17 And Joshua heard the sound of the people in their shouting, and he said to Moses, "A sound of war [is] in the camp."

18 But he said, "There is not a sound of shouting of victory, and there is not a sound of shouting of defeat. I hear a sound of singing."

19 {And} as he came near to the camp, he saw the bull calf and dancing, and {Moses became angry}, and he threw the tablets from his hand, and he broke them under the mountain.