Exodus 32:11–14
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We come now to one of the most rank and foul moments in the history of Israel. While Moses is on the mountain, enveloped in the lethal glory of God, receiving the very law that would define this people, the people themselves are down below, breaking the first two commandments with gusto. They have taken the plunder of Egypt, the very sign of God's judgment on a pagan nation, and have melted it down into an Egyptian idol. Aaron, in a spectacular failure of leadership, tries to steer the apostasy, to domesticate it. It is an attempt to pour the living God into a golden calf-shaped mold, to make Him manageable, visible, and controllable. It is the perennial temptation of every generation: to trade the transcendent, untamable God of the Bible for a god of our own making, a god who looks remarkably like us, or in this case, a cow.