Sunday, September 10, 2023

Benjamin Sommer on the Use of the Plural "Gods" to Describe the Golden Calf in Exodus 32:4

  

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)