The Golden Calf

And he [Aaron] received them [the golden earrings] at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

-- Exodus 32: 4 (KJV)

Encamped at the base of Mount Sinai, the Israelites grow nervous as eight chapters go by and Moses is still missing. The last they knew, Yahweh had whisked him up the mount for a summit, and they've begun to feel abandoned by both.

They begin to question the prohibition against "graven images," which was fine as long as Yahweh kept in touch directly or through Moses. Turning to their chief priest, Aaron, they demand that he "make us gods, which shall go before us," that is, lead them through the wilderness (Exodus 32: 1).

That the people have yet to shake the Egyptian proclivity for idols is bad enough; worse is that Aaron goes along with them. He melts down their gold earrings to form a "calf" or, according to the Hebrew, a bullock. Aaron then somewhat illogically proclaims the idol (singular) the "gods" (plural) who had delivered Israel from Egypt, and the people promptly begin making sacrifices to it/them.

Aaron's imagery is no accident; various major pagan gods were represented as virile calves. Furthermore, scholars detect in this passage veiled criticism of Jeroboam, who had set up statues of bulls at the chief Israelite shrines. The austere author (E) likely found such iconography both disgusting and heretical; if so, his judgment is shared by both Yahweh and Moses, as we shall see.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!