The Golden Calf Incident

In Hebrew, the Golden Calf incident is known as “the sin of the calf.” It is first recorded in Exodus 32:4. The golden calf refers to the idol the Israelites made while Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments from God. According to the biblical account, the golden calf was made by Aaron to appease the Israelites.

The wild bull was widely worshipped in ancient Egypt, the ancient Near East, and the Aegean region. The bull god was one of the gods of Egypt, representing fertility, and the bull was a common symbol for it. Although the Israelites had left Egypt, they were still deeply influenced by local Egyptian culture. When Aaron made the golden calf, the people knelt before it, and this idol worship led to debauchery and drunken revelry. Their behavior was so outrageous that when Moses came down from the mountain and saw the scene, he angrily smashed the two stone tablets on which God had written the Ten Commandments, because the people had already abandoned God in their hearts. When confronted, Aaron defended himself to Moses by saying, “I threw the gold into the fire, and out came this calf!” Moses saw that Aaron had let the people get out of control and act wildly. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” All the Levites gathered around him, choosing to side with God (which is why the descendants of Levi were later chosen by God as priests).

Three thousand people were punished and put to death for their lawless behavior during the golden calf incident.

This practice had a profound influence on Israelite culture and even on modern human society. We know from the Book of Kings that after the division of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom, set up golden calf statues in Bethel and Dan to be worshipped instead of God. Subsequent kings of the northern kingdom followed this practice, causing the people to fall into sin. In human culture, the calf has consistently been a symbol of wealth and power. Today, there are bull statues in front of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Europe’s second-largest exchange after London, and on Wall Street, the financial center of the United States.

(Compiled and edited based on the Chinese Union Version, a comprehensive biblical interpretation, and recordings from David Pawson’s “Unlocking the Old Testament” series.)