Golden Calf

Pashat Ki Tisa

The sequence of events following the event on Mt. Sinai is confusing both from a literal sense and from a theological sense.  In this post we'll attempt to shed light on one of the most confounding theological stories in all of the Torah, the story of the golden calf.  We'll see that out of a very specific context, this story makes no sense.  Unfortunately, the Rabbis from Talmudic times until the 20th century were missing some key pieces of information to properly make sense of the story.

A Quick Recap

The story of Mt Sinai goes something like this.  The Israelites arrive at Sinai and prepare for the revelation (Exod 19).  The 10 commandments are given (Exod 20:1-13).  The people tell Moshe to go talk to God by himself, which he does (Exod 20:14-17).   A somewhat curious group of commandments is given (Exod 20:19-22).  The commandments discussing social laws, based off of the Hammurabi code (Exod 21:1-23:4).  Another curious set of commandments are given (Exod 23:6-19).  And then a promise about conquering Israel (Exod 23:20-33).   

Moshe teaches Israel the commandments, presumably the ones in the previous chapters, the people accept it.  He brings 70 people with him to the top of the mountain, all of which meet God and even have a meal there. (Exod 24:1-11).  Moshe goes to the mountain again, now for the 40 day, 40 night period we all know (Exod 24:12-18).  Commandments about the tabernacle (Exod 25-27).  Commandments about the priestly clothing (Exod 28).  Commandments about the inauguration of Aharon and his sons into the priesthood (Exod 29-30).  Call of Bezalel and Oholiab who are to make the stuff in the previous chapters (Exod 31:1-11).  Commandments about Shabbat (Exod 31:12-17).  And finally, God gives Moshe the two tablets (Exod 31:18).

The people see Moshe is late descending from the mountain, so they make a Golden Calf (Exod 32:1-6).  God wants to destroy Israel, Moshe convinces him not to (Exod 32:7-14).  Moshe comes down, sees the calf, breaks the tablets, and the Levites slaughter approximately 3000 people (Exod 32:15-35).  Moshe puts his tent outside the camp (Exod: 33:1-11).  God reveals himself to Moshe (Exod 33:12-23).  God instructs Moshe to make new tablets (Exod 34:1-10).  God gives a different set of ten commandments (Exod 34:12-26, and next week's topic.)  God instructs Moshe to write those commandments on the tablets, which he does during another 40 day stint (Exod 34:27-35).

Yet even more commandments (Exod 35).  The making of the tabernacle stuff (Exod 36-40).

The Golden Calf

Given the story recounted above, the construction of the golden calf makes no sense.  In this story, the people here directly from God the second commandment, which is pretty clear that they shouldn't be making graven images.  Could it possibly be that they forgot this commandment in forty days?  Also, why would they choose a cow of all things?

If you've been following this blog so far, you'll probably have already thought of a nice possibility to explain why the Israelites might make an idol just after hearing a commandment from God himself telling them not to.  The answer lies in the fact that there appear to be multiple versions of the ten commandments.  Furthermore, only the version in Exodus 34 is actually referred to as a set of ten commandments.  So you can imagine two versions of the story here, one in which the people never hear the commandment about idols from God.  There are in fact multiple stories here, and while it's possible to separate them into self-consistent strands, I'd rather focus on something different in this post.  I'd like to talk about the second question: why choose a cow.

The Rival Shrine

The verse describing the construction of the calf is (Exod 32:1-6):

1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him: 'Up, make us a god who shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.' 2 And Aaron said unto them: 'Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.' 3 And all the people broke off the golden rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. 4 And he received it at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf; and they said: 'This is thy god, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.' 5 And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said: 'To-morrow shall be a feast to the LORD.' 6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to make merry.

The phrase "which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" appears elsewhere in Tanach.  The context in which it appears is startling (1 Kings 12:25-32):

25 Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim, and dwelt therein; and he went out from thence, and built Penuel. 26 And Jeroboam said in his heart: 'Now will the kingdom return to the house of David. 27 If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then will the heart of this people turn back unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah; and they will kill me, and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.' 28 Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said unto them: 'Ye have gone up long enough to Jerusalem; behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.' 29 And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. 30 And this thing became a sin; for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan. 31 And he made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, that were not of the sons of Levi. 32 And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah, and he went up unto the altar; so did he in Beth-el, to sacrifice unto the calves that he had made; and he placed in Beth-el the priests of the high places that he had made.

The similarities cannot be coincidental  In 1 Kings we see that Yeroboam (Jeroboam) makes two golden calves and installs them in two northern cities, the purpose of which is to rival Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.  He uses the same words as are used in the story of the golden calf at the time of the Torah, and he also declares a feast afterwards.  And if this wasn't enough, Yeroboam's sons are named Nadav and Aviyah (1 Kings 14:20), almost exactly the same as the two sons of Aharon, Nadav,and Avihu who are later killed by God for offering an inappropriate sacrifice!

Here's the takeaway point.  It makes absolutely no sense for Yeroboam to do this if everyone knew the story of the golden calf.  The people would think he was mad to do the same thing that the people did at the time of Moshe which led to the death of many people and caused the wrath of God to be roused against the Israelites.  Yeroboam and his people must have been unaware of this story.  This can only mean that Yeroboam's story came first, and the golden calf story came afterwards as a sort of polemic against the northern Israelite shrines.

Looking at it this way, it makes a lot of sense.  Yeroboam makes two shrines.  The authors of this story [1] wanted to discredit the northern kingdom.  So they retrojected the calves into the distant past, and wrote a negative story about how God really disliked golden calves.  Did Yeroboam's golden calves actually exist?  Besides the account in Melachim, Hoshea also mentions them (Hos 8:5-6), so we're probably on pretty firm ground in stating that these calves actually existed and were critiqued by at least one northern prophet, and likely the southern kingdom as well.

But Why the Cow?

We have not yest answered the question of why bother to use a cow.  It's possible to approach this by comparing a golden calf with the central element in the Jerusalem temple, the holy ark.  The holy ark was a square box, plated in gold, and topped by a cover with two cruvim.  In modern English, these would be translated as cherubim and would likely be given an image of angelic winged beings.  An image like this is probably what you think of when you think of the ark.  However, the ancient near east cruv looked different.  It was a fearsome winged beast, and looked like this.  They are all over Assyrian and Bablyonian art, specifically on thrones, like in this image.  Therefore, it makes sense to interpret the ark as a divine throne.  And indeed, in the biblical account, God's shechina (holy presence) is described as living on top of the ark (Exod. 25:22).

Ok, so why is this relevant.  It turns out the bull symbology was associated with the Canaanite god El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, and also to a somewhat lesser degree Ba'al.  El is often referred to in Akkadian as tr 'l, which would read the same in Hebrew, bull El [2].   El is used often in the Tanach as a description of God.  Nearly every biblical scholar agrees that YHWH and El were separate deities that fused at some point into one.  They were probably fused by the time of Yeroboam.  So what's happening here is that Yeroboam is tapping into old symbolism for El-YHWH.  The golden calf is a symbol for El-YHWH in the exact same manner as the ark.  It is also a symbolism that everyone will be aware of, just as they all know what the cruvim represent.

One oft-heard thing from Orthodox Jews is that their religion is authentic, the real original Judaism.  This is often said in contrast to Reform or Conservative.  The reason that they take this route is that authenticity is a very appealing, and if you can convince others that your practices represent a more ancient and authentic version, then you're going to have a lot of persuading power.  If you can convince people that this is what their distant ancestors did, then you may convince them to do the same.  Yeroboam may have been doing something similar.  The ark in Jerusalem was a newer symbolism, the bull idol was more ancient.  He might have been billing it as a more authentic way to worship God, more in touch with the past, more similar to what the Israelite's ancestors would have worshiped.  That is why Yeroboam chose the bull as his symbol.  And that is why the Israelites would have tolerated it.

Making Sense of it All

If you take the bible at its literal word, the story makes no sense.  The Israelites making a calf symbol right after hearing a commandment from God to not do exactly that thing.  And then the King of Israel, doing the exact same thing five hundred years later, and the entire population is apparently okay with it, even though the earlier golden calf story is right there in their holy book.  The only way to salvage a reasonable story is to place the golden calves of Yeroboam as occurring first.  The golden calf story in the desert, must be later.

There are still some complications in the story.  For example, Aaron is portrayed in a negative light.  So the author of the story must have been someone that was antagonistic to both the priests claiming priesthood from Aaron, and antagonistic to Yeroboam.  We'll talk about the priestly rivalries in later weeks.  But as foreshadowing, keep in mind that polemics against rival priestly groups are littered throughout the Torah   

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1. Friedman, in Who Wrote the Bible attributes this story to E, and claims E was the northern priests of Shiloh, who were snubbed by Yeroboam from serving in his shrines. This is supported by F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, Harvard Univ Press, 1973 p 198-199 .^

2. See, for example, Cross p. 15.^