From the Joel Baden’s Youtube interview.
Extract from the video. Emphasis is mine.
Episode Description: The Golden Calf incident in Exodus 32 is perhaps the most famous story of rebellion in the Hebrew Bible. It’s presented as the ultimate sin, a moment of profound betrayal just after the Israelites received the law at Mount Sinai. But a closer look at the text, its historical context, and its connections to other parts of the Bible reveals a far more complex and fascinating narrative than a simple tale of idolatry. In this episode of Misquoting Moses, Dr. Joel Baden joins host Megan Kraege to dismantle common misconceptions and reveal the polemical battleground hidden within this ancient story.
The episode begins by setting the stage. Moses has been on Mount Sinai for over a month, receiving chapter after chapter of detailed instructions for building the Tabernacle. The people below, recently escaped from slavery and stranded in the wilderness, are terrified. Their leader and sole conduit to the divine has vanished. Their plea to Aaron is not, “Let’s find a new god,” but rather, “We need a replacement for Moses.” Their anxiety is palpable and, in some ways, understandable. They need a tangible way to feel the presence and guidance of the deity who brought them out of Egypt.
Dr. Baden argues that the calf Aaron creates is not an idol of a foreign deity like the Egyptian Apis bull or the Canaanite god Baal. Instead, it is intended to be a representation of Yahweh. The evidence is right in the text. First, after creating the calf, Aaron proclaims, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to Yahweh.” He explicitly names the God of Israel. Second, the people declare, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” As Dr. Baden points out, no one in the entire biblical tradition ever suggests that any god other than Yahweh was responsible for the Exodus. Therefore, the calf must be a symbol for Yahweh.
So, if they weren’t committing apostasy by worshipping another god, what was their sin? The answer lies not in the famous Ten Commandments, but in the lesser-known Covenant Code (Exodus 21:23). The very first law in this code, which the Israelites had just sworn a covenant to uphold, states: “You shall not make gods of silver and gold to be with me.”(1) Their sin was not abandoning Yahweh, but worshipping the right God in the wrong way—by creating a graven image, an act that had just been explicitly forbidden. This is why Moses, upon seeing the calf, smashes the tablets containing this very law code.
Perhaps the most compelling argument in the episode revolves around a strange grammatical inconsistency. When the single calf is presented, the people exclaim in the plural, “These are your gods…” Why the plural? Dr. Baden reveals that this exact phrase appears in only one other place in the Bible: 1 Kings 12. There, after the kingdom of Israel splits, King Jeroboam of the Northern Kingdom sets up two golden calves in his new sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel and uses the exact same proclamation.
This connection suggests that the Golden Calf story in Exodus is not a historical account from the time of Moses, but a later, mythological story written as a polemic against the religious practices of the Northern Kingdom. The author of the Exodus story is essentially taking a contemporary political and religious issue—Jeroboam’s calves—and retroactively casting it as the paradigmatic sin of Israel’s ancient past. It’s a brilliant and subtle literary move to condemn a rival’s form of worship. The episode also delves into the many strange and confusing details that follow: Moses grinding up the calf and making the people drink it, the Levites slaughtering thousands of their own kin, and the multiple, seemingly contradictory punishments God doles out.
Three Key Takeaways:
- 1. The Sin Was Improper Worship, Not Apostasy
- 2. The Story is a Polemic Against the Northern Kingdom
- 3. The Golden Calf Story Became a “Magnet” for Traditions of Sin and Punishment
End Extract
(1) Some translations say “alongside me” or “in addition to me” instead of “to be with me.” 23 You shall not make other gods besides Me; gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves. NASB Bible Gateway
