And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.
Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, х nizmeey (H5141)] - nose rings (Genesis 24:47; Proverbs 11:22; Isaiah 3:21; Ezekiel 16:12), or earrings (Genesis 35:4; Judges 8:24-25; Job 42:11; Hosea 2:15) (other two words for earrings are used, Exodus 35:22; Numbers 31:50). It was not an Egyptian custom for young men to wear earrings; and the circumstance therefore seems to point out 'the mixed rabble,' who were chiefly foreign slaves, as the ringleaders in this insurrection. The word "sons" does not seem to have been in the Hebrew text read by the Septuagint translators, who make mention only of wives and daughters. In giving direction to break off their earrings.
Aaron, who is supposed by some writers (Augustine, 'Quaest.,' 41:, in Exodus; Theodoret, vol. 1:, in Exodus), to have been anxious to discourage the project, probably calculated on gaining time, or perhaps on the people's covetousness and love of finery proving stronger than their idolatrous propensity. But if such were his expectations, they were doomed to signal disappointment; for the people displayed the utmost alacrity in devoting those ornaments which they had received, through the special and most seasonable bounty of God, to the construction of the impatiently desiderated idol. Better far would it have been for Aaron to have calmly and earnestly remonstrated with them, or to have preferred duty to expediency, leaving the issue in the hands of Providence, than, through exhausted faith and timidity, to have yielded so facile and unworthy a compliance with the demands of a perverse rabble.