Exodus 32:17

17 When Y'hoshua heard the noise of the people shouting he said to Moshe, "It sounds like war 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 Moshe turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets inscribed on both sides, on the front and on the back.

16 The tablets were the work of God; and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

17 When Y'hoshua heard the noise of the people shouting he said to Moshe, "It sounds like war in the camp!"

18 He answered, "That is neither the clamor of victory nor the wailings of defeat; what I hear is the sound of people singing."

19 But the moment Moshe got near the camp, when he saw the calf and the dancing, his own anger blazed up. He threw down the tablets he had been holding and shattered them at the base of the mountain.