"Throughout the remainder of the Pentateuch, the incident of the worship of the golden calf cast a dark shadow across Israel's relationship with God, much the same way as the account of the Fall in Genesis 3 marked a major turning point in God's dealing with humankind."505
It has always been hard for God's people to wait for Him (cf. 1 Sam. 8:4-5). When Moses lingered on the mountain, the people decided to worship a new god (v. 1) and make a new covenant. They did not wait for guidance from God. This reflects a shallow commitment to Him and their leader, Moses. Evidently they concluded that Moses had perished in the fire on Mt. Sinai and decided to select a new leader. Moses was a god to Israel in the sense that he was their leader (4:16). Now they turned from Moses as their leader to Aaron.
Some commentators have interpreted Aaron's instruction that the Israelites should sacrifice their jewelry and ornaments (v. 2) as designed to discourage their rebellion.506If this was his intent, he failed (v. 3). It seems more probable that Aaron approved of their plan.
Aaron could have intended the golden calf to represent a god other than Yahweh or Yahweh Himself.
"In the present passage the term gods, or rather god[Elohim], represented in the golden calf, seems to be understood as an attempt to represent the God of the covenant with a physical image. The apostasy of the golden calf, therefore, was idolatry, not polytheism. Indeed, throughout Scripture Israel was repeatedly warned about the sin of idolatry."507
"It is precisely the attempt to worship Yahwehby means he has already declared totally unacceptable that makes the sin of the golden calf so destructive, far more so than a simple shift of allegiance to other' or foreign' gods."508
The calf provided a visible symbol that the Israelites could and did identify as their deliverer. The English word "idol"derives from the Greek eidolon, meaning "something to be seen."The Apis bull was such a symbol in Egyptian religion. The Egyptians viewed this animal as the vehicle on which a god rode in power, and as such they identified it as divine itself. Sacred bulls or calves were common in the ancient Near East because of this identification.
"The bull seems to have had manifold meanings in the iconography of the Near East. It symbolized the god. It expressed attributes of a god. It represented a pedestal for the god. Each of these meanings is important in understanding the cult of the golden calves in Israel's religious experience."509
The altar and feast that accompanied the construction of the idol (v. 5) support the contention that Aaron was leading the people in a celebration of a new covenant. His disobedience to the second commandment (20:2-6), which he had received by this time, resulted in his returning to an Egyptian form of worship that repudiated Yahweh. The "play"that followed the feast seems to have been wicked (cf. v. 25).
"The verb translated to play' suggests illicit and immoral sexual activity which normally accompanied fertility rights found among the Canaanites who worshipped the god Baal."510
"That the sin of Aaron and the people was tantamount to covenant repudiation is clear from the account of the making of the calf. The calf was hailed as the god . . . who brought you up out of Egypt' (Ex. 32:4), the exact language of the historical prologue of the Sinaitic Covenant in which Yahweh described the basis of His authority to be Israel's God (20:2). Moreover, Aaron built an altar for the purpose of covenant affirmation and ceremony (v. 5), precisely as Moses had done previously on the people's commitment to the covenant arrangement (24:4). Aaron's proclamation concerning a festival and its implementation on the following day (32:5-6) was again identical to the celebration that attended the mutual acceptance of the covenant terms under Moses (24:11)."511
Many years later Israel's King Jeroboam I re-established worship of the golden calves, and this practice became a great stumbling block to Israel (1 Kings 12:28-31).
"The calf represented Yahweh on theirterms. Yahweh had made clear repeatedly that he would be received and worshiped [sic] only on histerms."512
