Exodus Chapter 32 verse 4 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 4. - And fashioned it with a graving tool. Rather, "and bound it (the gold) in a bag." Compare 2 Kings 5:23, where the same two Hebrew words occur in the same sense. It is impossible to extract from the original the sense given in the Authorised Version, since the simple copula van cannot mean "after." When two verbs in the same tense are conjoined by van "and," the two actions must be simultaneous, or the latter follow the former. But the calf cannot have been graven first, and then molten. It is objected to the rendering, "he bound it in a bag," that that action is so trivial that it would be superfluous to mention it (Keil). But it is quite consonant with the simplicity of Scripture to mention very trivial circumstances. The act of putting up in bags is mentioned both here and also in 2 Kings 5:23, and 2 Kings 12:9. They said. The fashioners of the image said this. These be thy gods. Rather, "This is thy God." Why Aaron selected the form of the calf as that which he would present to the Israelites to receive their worship, has been generally explained by supposing that his thoughts reverted to Egypt, and found in the Apis of Memphis or the Mnevis of Hellopolis the pattern which he thought it best to follow. But there are several objections to this view. 1. The Egyptian gods had just been discredited by their powerlessness being manifested - it was an odd time at which to fly to them. 2. Apis and Mnevis were not molten calves, but live bulls. If the design had been to revert to Egypt, would not a living animal have been selected? 3. The calf when made was not viewed as an image of any Egyptian god, but as a representation of Jehovah (ver. 5). . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(4) And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool.--Rather, and he received it (i.e., the gold) at their hand, and bound it in a bag. So Gesenius, Rosenmller, Frst, Knobel, Kurtz, Maurer, Ser?der, Cook, &c. "Fashioned it with a graving tool" is a possible rendering of the Hebrew words, but will not suit here, since the next clause tells us that the image was a molten one, and if it had been intended to say that the image was first molten and then finished with a graving too!, the order of the two clauses would have been inverted. A similar phrase to that here used has the sense of "bound in a bag" in 2Kings 5:23.After he had made it a molten calf.--This is a quite impossible rendering. The original gives "and," not "after." The action of this clause must either be simultaneous with that of the last or subsequent. Translate, and made it into a molten calf.A molten calf.--It has been usual to regard the selection of the "calf" form for the image as due to Egyptian influences. But the Egyptian calf-worship, or, rather, bull-worship, was not a worship of images, but of living animals. A sacred bull, called Apis, was worshipped at Memphis, and another, called Mnevis, at Heliopolis, both being regarded as actual incarnate deities. Had Egyptian ideas been in the ascendant, it would have been natural to select a living bull, which might have "gone before" the people literally. The "molten calf," which had no very exact counterpart in Egypt, perhaps points back to an older idolatry, such as is glanced at in Joshua 24:14, where the Israelites are warned to "put away the gods which their fathers served on the other side of the flood," i.e., of the Euphrates. Certainly the bull form was more distinctive of the Babylonian and Assyrian than of the Egyptian worship, and it may he suspected that the emigrants from Chaldaea had clung through all their wanderings to the mystic symbolism which had been elaborated in that primaeval land, and which they would contrast favourably with the coarse animal worship of Egypt. In Chaldaea, the bull, generally winged and human-headed, represented the combination of wisdom, strength, and omnipresence, which characterises divinity; and this combination might well have seemed to carnal minds no unapt symbol of Jehovah.These be thy gods.--Rather, This is thy god.