The golden calf incident has always mystified me. I mean, after all God did for the Israelites, and they make an idol to worship? It didn’t make sense.
In Exodus 30 and 31, Moses and God are talking on Mt. Sinai. Okay, God is dictating the specifications of the tabernacle furnishings – priests’ clothing, the incense altar, etc. There was a lot of gold. A lot of the descriptions of the furnishings say “overlay the top and sides with gold, and run a gold molding around it”. Wow. It’s sort of amazing. God must have loved gold. The heavenly city in Revelation has streets of gold. Gold represented purity and beauty, which in turn represented God.
The irony of the people requesting a God to worship and then making it out of pure gold, melted down from their jewelry, is not lost on us. Moses had been gone a long time and the people complained to Aaron. “Come on, make us some gods who can lead us. We don’t know what happened to Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt” (Ex. 32:1). They wanted a god they could see and touch and worship. They wanted a god they could understand. This Yahweh was frightening. He did stuff they didn’t understand and disappeared without warning. They knew about livestock and what could be more harmless than a calf, especially one without a mother?
Aaron, the go-along guy, did as they requested. He melted down their gold jewelry and molded a calf for them to worship. Why a calf? On the surface, it seems like a sort of permanent sacrifice. It wasn’t a many-breasted fertility goddess or a reptile. It wasn’t a “half man/half animal” type of God like so many of the ancients worshiped. It was a beautiful golden calf, standing alone and innocent. It’s possible also that the Israelites had been influenced by the Egyptians and their worship of similar “bull” gods.
But Aaron didn’t stop there. He saw how excited the people were (32:5) and built an altar in front of the calf. “Tomorrow will be a festival to the Lord!” So this calf represented…God? Perhaps it wasn’t idolatry in the strictest sense. The calf represented God, the One who got them through the Red Sea, provided water and food in the desert and made an entire mountain holy. This “new” God who moved in a cloud and fire would probably have terrified the Israelites, so mysterious and yet ever-present, no touching allowed.
In Exodus 32:7, the Lord told Moses to get back down the mountain because the people were out of control and worshiping a calf. God calls them “your people” to Moses, charging him with responsibility. Interesting. God laments how quickly they turned away from His commands. He’s angry and wants to let His anger blaze against them. He promises to make Moses a great nation, wiping out all the infidels at the base of the mountain.
Moses reminds God (and Himself) of how the Lord’s great power got the people out of Egypt, and how bad it would look to the Egyptians if God wiped them out now (32:12) and then Moses reminds God of the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (32:13). So the Lord changed his mind about bringing down the hammer on the Israelites (32:14). But did he really change His mind? I think the reminders Moses gave were for Moses just as much as for God. Moses needed to remember what was at stake as well. Just keep swimming…
Moses and Joshua returned to camp. Moses saw the people engaged in revelry, got angry, and threw down the tablets God himself inscribed, smashing them to bits. He took the calf and burned it. This probably took a lot time, and felt like when your parents were mad at you when you were a kid: a slow burn. You know the punishment is coming, but when?! Moses ground it into powder, threw it in the water and made the people drink it (32:20). Ick! The original Goldwater.
Aaron did not escape unscathed. Moses called him on his actions. Aaron, eager to escape Moses’ wrath says, “Calm down, Mo. Dude, you know how evil these people are! They made me do it! I took their jewelry and – the fact that it came out a calf, well, that was weird!” (32:22-24, Susan paraphrase).
Moses was not fooled. He made the people choose sides. Whoever was on the Lord’s side stood by Moses; Moses and the Levites stood together. Moses commanded the Levites to kill everyone who was not on the Lord’s side – brothers, friends and neighbors (32:27-28). The Levites did it and killed 3000 people. This seemed like a very harsh punishment. What appears to be happening here is that idolatry in any way, shape or form won’t be tolerated. The people needed to be completely worshiping God and none other, and worshiping God the way He wanted to be worshiped. Moses commended the Levites and said they earned a blessing (32:29).
Moses talked to the remnant of the people next day, explaining that though they’d committed a terrible sin, he would go to the Lord and intercede for them. Moses pleaded with the Lord to forgive their sin and if not, to erase his own name from the record God has written (32:22). This surprised me. Moses was willing to take the punishment for the people’s sins, to be the scapegoat. The Lord says he’ll only erase the names of those who sinned against him (you can almost hear God sighing in resignation here). Having your name erased out of the record was a big deal. It would be as if those people never existed.
The chapter ends with the Lord sending a great plague upon the people because they worshiped the calf. This is probably where a lot of prophets get their ideas about AIDS and other diseases being curses from God.
Don’t we have our calves? Don’t we have the “ways” we want to worship God? I know Jonathon and I are very particular about worship, what it sounds like, being musicians. We attended a church for a brief time with a saw in the orchestra. But God cares very little about what it sounds like. What pleases God? He’s always been after our hearts. His ways are not our ways (Is. 55) and we need to remember that.
Dancing in the Rain 