In light of
the notion of divine fluidity embraced by the JE traditions responsible for the
Golden Calf story, a famous crux that appears there disappears. Readers have
long been baffled by Aaron’s apparently polytheistic description of the Golden
Calf in Exodus 32.4: “These are your gods, O Israel, who took you out of Egypt.”
The reference to gods in the plural is surprising, (That the noun ‘eloheka here
is plural is clear from the plural verb and pronoun) both because Aaron is
careful to make clear in 32.5 that the holiday they celebrate in front of the
calf. One explanation for the odd phrasing employed by Aaron lies with the notion
of fluidity. Because the one God has multiple bodies and manifestations, a
person might refer to the manifestations in the plural without impugning the
status of Yhwh as the only deity. There is nothing inconsistent in Aaron’s
assertion that the one calf embodies a multiplicity of divinity or hat the
festival in front of this calf honors Yhwh and no other deity. Various
manifestations of Yhwh acted on earth to take Israel out of Egypt (for example,
the angel in the small fire in Exodus 3-4 and also the Destroyer in Exodus 12).
These manifestations are all “gods,” but they are all Yhwh. Seen from within
its own thought-world—the world in which God’s bodies parallel God’s selves—Aaron’s
statements is perfectly normal. Similarly, Jeroboam sets up two calves and
refers to them as “gods” not because he encourages polytheism but because both calves
are divine in the sense that they embody Yhwh. One of these calves, more specifically,
is a deity we can refer to as “Yhwh in Dan,” and the other we can call “Yhwh in
Bethel” (or simply “Bethel,” another name for Yhwh in His manifestation in that
locale). (Benjamin D. Sommer, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient
Israel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009], 53)
This explanation
does not contradict or supplant another explanation. To wit, the text in Exodus
uses the plural because it alludes to the story of the two calves Jeroboam set
up, one in Bethal and one in Dan (1 Kings 12:28-29). (Ibid., 209 n. 91)
