Golden Calf Incident

Biblical Text and Narrative

The account appears in Exodus 32. While Moses spent forty days on Mount Sinai to receive the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:18), the waiting people demanded that Aaron make them a god to lead them. Aaron collected the people's golden earrings, fashioned an image of a calf, built an altar before it, and proclaimed, "To morrow is a feast to the LORD." The people offered burnt offerings, "sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play" (Exodus 32:6).

When God declared that He would consume the people, Moses pleaded with Him, and God relented (Exodus 32:11-14). Coming down from the mountain, Moses broke the tablets, burned the calf, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the people drink it. That day about three thousand people fell by the hand of the Levites, who had gathered in answer to Moses' call. Moses then prayed again that God would forgive the people, and if not, "blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written" (Exodus 32:32). In the chapters that follow (Exodus 33-34), the covenant is renewed and new tablets are given.

Background

Because the incident is placed between the instructions for building the tabernacle (chapters 25-31) and their execution (chapters 35-40), many interpreters see it as contrasting worship ordained by God with worship devised by human beings. The Hebrew word egel, translated "calf," refers to a young bull. Scholars sometimes explain the incident by comparison with bull worship in Egypt or with the Canaanite worship of Baal. The word for "god" in Exodus 32:4 is the Hebrew Elohim; because the accompanying verb is plural, some translations render it "gods."

Significance in the Whole of Scripture

In Deuteronomy 9, Moses recalls the incident to remind the people of their rebellion, and Psalm 106:19-23 and Nehemiah 9:18 likewise remember it as a defining sin of Israel. The later act of Jeroboam, who set up golden calves at Bethel and Dan and spoke the same words (1 Kings 12:28), is read as a repetition of this incident.

In the New Testament, Stephen cites the incident as an example of Israel's rejection of Moses (Acts 7:39-41), and Paul quotes Exodus 32:6 in warning against idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:7). There is also a traditional Christian interpretation that Moses' intercession foreshadows the mediation of Christ.

Interpretations and Issues

• Which commandment was broken: Pointing to Aaron's proclamation of "a feast to the LORD," some interpreters hold that the sin was not so much the worship of another god as the worship of the LORD through an image, a violation of the second commandment.
• God's relenting: The Reformed tradition generally presupposes God's immutability and explains this language as accommodated to human understanding. Other interpretations emphasize the real power of prayer in this passage.
• The prayer to be blotted out of the book: Interpretations differ on whether this "book" is the same as the Book of Life and on how to read the language suggesting that a name can be blotted out, questions bound up with the debate over predestination and free will.
• Material not found in the text: The story that Hur was killed while trying to restrain the people, so that Aaron complied out of fear, comes from Jewish rabbinic literature and is not in the biblical text. The text records only that Aaron blamed the people and excused himself by saying, "I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf" (Exodus 32:24).