In his
recent book on idolatry and worship in the Old Testament, Thomas A. Judge
discussed the golden calf in Exodus 32-33 and the calves at the temple in
Bethel and how they were not pedestals
but instead, representations of Yahweh Himself:
YHWH and the Golden
Calves
Finally, although the narratives dealing with the
golden calves of Aaron and Jeroboam treat the calves as fetishes—in other
words, they do not suggest that the calves are associated with gods but that they are gods—they nevertheless draw a number of connections between
YHWH and the calves which suggest that a battle is being fought on a domestic
front against the worship of YHWH via divine images. For example, in the Exodus
version (Exod. 32:1–35), the people ask Aaron to ‘make them a god’ and Aaron
makes them an image of gold and calls it a god. At least superficially, this
way of telling the story seems to imply that the people who made use of the
calf were not using it in order to
worship a god but that they regarded the statue itself as a god to be
worshiped. Therefore one might conclude that the text is neither fighting
against divine images of alien deities (for the narrative does nothing to
suggest this) nor fighting against divine images of YHWH, but merely condemning
the absurd worship of statuary.
However, the narrative also makes clear that
YHWH’s appointed priest makes the calf, at the request of the people of Israel,
and that it is found at the centre of a festival dedicated to YHWH. Therefore,
when Moses comes down the mountain he finds a scene in which the people of
Israel are celebrating a festival to YHWH with an altar built in front of the
golden image of a calf and the priest of YHWH presiding over it all. It would
be difficult to paint a better picture of the worship of YHWH via divine
images.
In support of this suggestion, like Deut. 4,
the theme of divine presence connects YHWH and the calves. First, the people
say to Aaron, ‘Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us’. YHWH then tells
Israel that he would not go up among them for if he should go up among them for
a single moment, he would consume them. Then, after Moses’ intercession, YHWH
says, ‘My presence shall go with you’. Once the calf is destroyed, the two
tablets of the covenant are remade and the ark of the covenant goes before the
people. The calf is left behind but the ark and the tablets go on. This
sequence directly contrasts the calf as the illegitimate mode of YHWH’s
presence with YHWH’s word (and his glory) which is/are legitimate modes of his
presence.
Although the narrative condemns the calf as a
mere fetish, it also suggests that those who made use of the calf in worship
held it to be a legitimate ‘representation of’ or perhaps ‘pedestal for’ YHWH.
The connections between YHWH and the calf within the text itself point to a
battle on a domestic front.
The same could be said concerning Jeroboam’s
calves described in 1 Kgs 12:25–33. Jeroboam makes the calves and then
introduces them to the people as ‘gods’. Like Aaron, Jeroboam declares in v.
28,
… הנה
אלהיך ישראל אשר העלוך מארץ מצרים
… Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up
out of the land of Egypt.
At first glance, the narrative again seems to
suggest that the people of the Northern Kingdom were not worshipping a deity associated with the calves but that they
were worshipping the calves themselves.
However, eight points appear to support the connection between the calves and
YHWH.
First, Jeroboam makes the calves in order to
keep the people of the north from going down to Jerusalem to worship YHWH. It
seems unlikely that Jeroboam would attempt to secure the allegiance of these
YHWH worshipers at this time by imposing upon them either the worship of alien
deities or the worship of fetishes. Instead, it seems more probable that he was
offering alternative locations for the worship of YHWH in the Northern Kingdom.
Secondly, the criticism brought against
Jeroboam’s cult in 1 Kgs 12:25–33 makes the most sense if the cult was intended
for the worship of YHWH. The writer criticizes Jeroboam for installing priests
who were not Levites, for inventing a feast in the eighth (as opposed to the
seventh) month and for establishing the worship of the calves at Bethel and
Dan. These three points of criticism stand in stark contrast to the picture
presented in 1 Kgs 8, where all the people of Israel had gathered to worship
YHWH in Jerusalem (the place that YHWH had chosen), led by the Levites (the
priests whom YHWH had chosen) on the fifteenth day of the seventh month (the month YHWH had chosen). The criticism of
Jeroboam’s cult would be meaningless or at best highly tangential unless the
text was fighting against an illegitimate form of the worship of YHWH. If the
people of the Northern Kingdom were worshipping alien deities or even mere
fetishes, why would it matter that Jeroboam did not have Levite priests, or
that he invented a feast day in an alternative month, or that he chose to set
up the calves in Bethel and Dan? These points only prove that the cult of the
calves is illegitimate if it was intended for the worship of YHWH.
The third point is small but relevant.
Jeroboam gives his son a Yahwistic name: Abijah, meaning ‘YHWH is my Father’.
The text notes, ‘He alone of Jeroboam’s family shall come to the grave, because
in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD, the God of Israel, in the
house of Jeroboam’. While the naming of the child could merely amount to
tradition, it could also indicate that Jeroboam maintained a form of devotion
to YHWH, albeit not a form that the biblical writer regarded as legitimate.
Fourthly, although Elijah, Elisha and Jehu
are strict Yahwists, they are not once noted for having criticized Jeroboam’s
calves. If the calves were used in the Northern Kingdom as representations of
alien deities or even as fetishes, then it would be shocking that they escaped
the condemnation of both Elijah and Elisha as well as the purge of Jehu.
Moreover, as Day has argued, the escape of the calves from Jehu’s purge argues
against the idea that they were associated with the worship of Baal (at least
up to the time of Jehu’s purge).
Fifthly, Hosea appears to take offence at
those who would go up to Bethel and take the oath ‘As the LORD lives’. This
suggests that there were those in the Northern Kingdom who would go up to the
location of one of Jeroboam’s calves and make oaths to YHWH. While this
provides no explanation regarding the relationship between YHWH and the calf at
Bethel, it reveals a perspective that did not hold the worship of YHWH and the
calves as mutually exclusive.
Sixthly, if the account of the calf at Horeb
is taken as a polemic against Jeroboam’s calves, then Aaron’s declaration,
‘Tomorrow shall be a festival to the LORD’, could also be taken to suggest that
Jeroboam’s cult was intended for the worship of YHWH. As noted previously,
interpreters often note the plural reference to the singular calf in Exod. 32
to suggest that the narrative is a veiled attempt to defame Jeroboam’s calves.
Seventh, if the narrative of Micah’s idol is
accepted as an attack upon the worship of YHWH via divine images, then the
ending of the story (which makes clear that the idol remained in Dan ‘until the
day of the captivity of the land’) would suggest that the place where Jeroboam
sets up one of the calves already had a long history of worshipping YHWH via
divine images.
Finally, some find support for the biblical
connections between YHWH and Jeroboam’s calves from extra-biblical evidence. As
Day has pointed out, the one personal name from Israel referring to a bull is ‘glyw, ‘calf of Yahweh’ (or possibly
‘Yahweh is a calf’), found on Samaria ostracon 41. This small extra-biblical
note seems to fall in line with the connections between YHWH and the calf that
I have identified within the world of the text. All of these points suggest
that Jeroboam’s calves were not presented as mere fetishes. Neither are they
ever associated with alien deities. Instead, the texts themselves draw strong
connections between the calves and YHWH.
Therefore, to conclude this very brief
consideration of the calves, it can be noted that although there has been an
enormous amount of scholarly debate on whether the calves of Aaron and Jeroboam
were regarded by those who made use of them as pedestals for YHWH,
representations of YHWH, divine images of alien deities,81 or simply
fetishes, the longevity of the debate demonstrates that there are enough
significant connections between YHWH and the calves within the texts to suggest
that they are fighting a battle against idols on a domestic front against the worship
of YHWH via divine images. Therefore, along with Deut. 12; Judg. 17–18 and
Deut. 4, these three texts dealing with the golden calves appear to fight
against the worship of the right God in the wrong way. (Thomas A. Judge, Other Gods
and Idols: The Relationship Between the Worship of Other Gods and the Worship
of Idols within the Old Testament [Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Studies 674; London: T&T Clark, 2019], 74-81)