Do you know the Old Testament story of the golden calf (Exodus 32:1-6)? Moses, the leader of the people of Israel, went up on Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments and other instructions from God. He was gone for forty days and the people grew anxious without him, so they asked Aaron, the priest, to make gods to lead them in Moses’s absence. Together with Aaron, then, they made a golden calf to worship. It’s shocking how quickly they turned to polytheism and idolatry, breaking both God’s first commandment—“You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)—and his second—“You shall not make for yourself a carved image” (Exodus 20:4).
But there’s something else to note: When the Israelites made the calf, they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” In their minds, the one golden calf was not their only god. They were, it seems, crediting the calf with working with the one true God to bring them out of Egypt. They may not have been denying that God brought them out of Egypt, but rather, denying that he had done it alone. And when they feasted … .
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