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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > April 2004

The Golden Calf

Made by Man...or God?

By Victor Hurowitz

While Moses was up on Mt. Sinai receiving the first edition of the Ten Commandments, the people down below grew impatient and asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them another god to lead them. Aaron instructed the people to rip off their gold earrings, which, the text tells us explicitly and unambiguously, “he made into a molten calf” (Exodus 32:4)—the famous Golden Calf. “These,” the people responded, “are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” When Moses came down from the mountain and saw the Golden 030Calf, he became enraged and hurled the […]

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Footnotes

1.

Midrash (plural midrashim) is rabbinic lore of either a legal or nonlegal nature attached to a biblical verse.

2.

Michael B. Dick, “Worshiping Idols: What Isaiah Didn’t Know,” BR, April 2002.

3.

This might account for the seemingly redundant words in Exodus 32:35: “Then the Lord sent a plague upon the people for having made the calf which Aaron had made.” This may simply add emphasis to the claim that the calf was indeed made by Aaron and not, as Aaron claimed, by itself.

Endnotes

1.

Pirqey de’Rabbi Eliezer 45.

2.

For synopsis and sources, see Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1911), vol. 3, p. 122; vol. 6, p. 51 n. 266.

3.

Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Graven Image,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, ed. Patrick Miller et al. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 15–32.

4.

Angelika Berlejung, “Washing the Mouth: The Consecration of Divine Images in Mesopotamia,” in The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconicism and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. Karel van der Toorn (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 45–72.

5.

For citations to texts, see Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, “The Mesopotamian God Image, from Womb to Tomb,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 123:1, p. 147.