Commentary on the Torah

by Richard Elliott Friedman

32:4–5. These are your gods.... And Aaron saw … A festival to YHWH tomorrow. So many questions: Why do they use the plural, “These are your gods,” when there is only one calf? What did Aaron see? Why does he proclaim a festival to YHWH in the middle of a pagan heresy? I gave the critical explanation of these problems elsewhere (see Who Wrote the Bible?). Here I want to give a pesat explanation of them as they appear in the text. The plural “gods” does not appear to refer to the calf. In the pagan religions of the ancient Near East, people did not worship animals, and they did not worship idols. They worshiped gods who were represented or honored by statues. The gods were sometimes pictured as enthroned on a platform, and the platform was commonly composed of figures of cherubs or of young bulls. Since there is only one young bull here, together with plural “gods,” we must understand the people to be perceiving the bull as a throne platform for gods whom they will worship. Note that the calf itself is not referred to as an idol. What Aaron sees is this behavior on the people’s part. The text does not reveal what Aaron has in mind when he makes the golden calf: does he mean it as a throne platform for such pagan deities, or as a throne platform for YHWH?! All we know is that, after he sees the people associating it with gods and claiming that these gods brought them out of Egypt, he declares that the worship that is to take place is “A festival to YHWH!” (Indeed, the word fo...