Other
idolatrous practices: the worship of the golden calf; its significance
In 922 BCE, when Jeroboam I established the northern kingdom of Israel following his father Solomon’s death, he built two golden calves and placed them in Bethel and Dan. According to 1 Kings 12: 26–30, Jeroboam surveyed the pious rituals of the Israelites relative to sacrifices:
26 Jeroboam thought to himself, "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. 27 If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.
28 After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
29 One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.
30 And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.
Jeroboam’s chief concern was that the tendency to offer sacrifices at a centralised venue in Jerusalem would lead to a return to King Rehoboam of Judah in the north. So he created the golden calf as a preventative measure to ensure his own safety and recognition as king. The above passage[1] is thought to have been the subject of later editing, but, says Burney[2], “there is no reason to infer that any detail of fact contained therein was not derived from the former time”; nor that the calves which Jeroboam set up were in fact bulls. The condemnation of the worship of the Golden Calf went back to ancient times.
Jeroboam thus established the golden calf as a symbol, and the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32:4 is another version of the same incident retrospectively projected. The Jeroboam account is an example of the technique of condemning a present day practice by making reference to it as a past event: the redactor moves the story back to condemn it. This is another example of the manner in which the Exile experience permeates the Hebrew Bible[3].
The bull was significant because the bull and the calf were the main symbols of the cult of El, which was associated with the worship of the Golden Calf, and both El and his son Ba’al Hadad wore bull horns on their headdress. A bronze Bull was discovered at Izbet Sartah near Mt Ebal in 1981. Jeroboam’s calf was intended to be a physical representation of the God of Israel, and therefore it was doubly wrong for involving Israel in idolatry and for ascribing physicality to God. Some believe the God of Israel was associated with or pictured as a calf/bull deity through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism. The mighty bull of Jacob also derives from the worship of the golden calf, and the ancient epithet of El,'abbir Ydaqob 'the mighty Bull of Jacob' was closely related to the tribe or federation of Joseph (Gen. 49.25) and the Ark (Ps. 132.2, 5)[4].
Other symbolic representations
By the eighth century the gods were represented by symbols: Yahweh by a stone or a hand and El by a bull, and the goddesses were also moving away from naked representations of their image to symbols. The Nehushtan in the Hebrew Bible was a sacred object in the form of a snake of brass upon a pole. In 2 Kings 18:4, a bronze serpent was set up in the Jerusalem Temple sanctuary. The Masoretic text says that "he [Hezekiah] called it Nehushtan"[5], but it has been suggested that it was Hezekiah who gave it this name, rather than it being some common term used by the Israelites. When Hezekiah became King, he tore down the Nehushtan, thus demonstrating his loyalty to the new regime by the destruction of an important symbol with Egyptian associations. The story of the Garden of Eden also contains allusions to the nehushtan - the serpent - as a symbol for casting out (another retrospective depiction of a present day practice into the distant past). The story of Abraham’s interrupted sacrifice of his son is considered an allegory in the form of a polemic against human sacrifice.
The Ark
.... was also a characteristic feature of the early Israelite cult of El Yahweh, and the Ark of the Covenant was the oldest and most sacrosanct cult object in the sanctuaries of pre-Monarchic Israel. According to tradition, it was kept at Shiloh and brought to Jerusalem. Another ark was kept at Beth-el[6] yet another at Gideah in Benjamin[7] and there were at least another two in other places.
A list of other references in the Hebrew Bible to idolatrous practices, which only serves to illustrate their prevalence, appears in an Appendix to this chapter.
[1] And also 2 Chronicles 10:14-15.
[2] Hebrew Text of Kings (1902), cited in Glover, Hebrew Bible in Crisis - It Ain’t necessarily so, WEA course, Lecture 4 “The emergence of Yahweh”.
[3] Glover, Ibid.
[3] Dijkstra, op cit, 107.
[4] For 2 Kings 18.4, see the last entry in the Appendix to this chapter..
[5] Judges 20:27-28.
[6] 1 Samuel 14.16-18.
26 Jeroboam thought to himself, "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. 27 If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam.
28 After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."
29 One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.
30 And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other.
Jeroboam’s chief concern was that the tendency to offer sacrifices at a centralised venue in Jerusalem would lead to a return to King Rehoboam of Judah in the north. So he created the golden calf as a preventative measure to ensure his own safety and recognition as king. The above passage[1] is thought to have been the subject of later editing, but, says Burney[2], “there is no reason to infer that any detail of fact contained therein was not derived from the former time”; nor that the calves which Jeroboam set up were in fact bulls. The condemnation of the worship of the Golden Calf went back to ancient times.
Jeroboam thus established the golden calf as a symbol, and the story of the golden calf in Exodus 32:4 is another version of the same incident retrospectively projected. The Jeroboam account is an example of the technique of condemning a present day practice by making reference to it as a past event: the redactor moves the story back to condemn it. This is another example of the manner in which the Exile experience permeates the Hebrew Bible[3].
The bull was significant because the bull and the calf were the main symbols of the cult of El, which was associated with the worship of the Golden Calf, and both El and his son Ba’al Hadad wore bull horns on their headdress. A bronze Bull was discovered at Izbet Sartah near Mt Ebal in 1981. Jeroboam’s calf was intended to be a physical representation of the God of Israel, and therefore it was doubly wrong for involving Israel in idolatry and for ascribing physicality to God. Some believe the God of Israel was associated with or pictured as a calf/bull deity through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism. The mighty bull of Jacob also derives from the worship of the golden calf, and the ancient epithet of El,'abbir Ydaqob 'the mighty Bull of Jacob' was closely related to the tribe or federation of Joseph (Gen. 49.25) and the Ark (Ps. 132.2, 5)[4].
Other symbolic representations
By the eighth century the gods were represented by symbols: Yahweh by a stone or a hand and El by a bull, and the goddesses were also moving away from naked representations of their image to symbols. The Nehushtan in the Hebrew Bible was a sacred object in the form of a snake of brass upon a pole. In 2 Kings 18:4, a bronze serpent was set up in the Jerusalem Temple sanctuary. The Masoretic text says that "he [Hezekiah] called it Nehushtan"[5], but it has been suggested that it was Hezekiah who gave it this name, rather than it being some common term used by the Israelites. When Hezekiah became King, he tore down the Nehushtan, thus demonstrating his loyalty to the new regime by the destruction of an important symbol with Egyptian associations. The story of the Garden of Eden also contains allusions to the nehushtan - the serpent - as a symbol for casting out (another retrospective depiction of a present day practice into the distant past). The story of Abraham’s interrupted sacrifice of his son is considered an allegory in the form of a polemic against human sacrifice.
The Ark
.... was also a characteristic feature of the early Israelite cult of El Yahweh, and the Ark of the Covenant was the oldest and most sacrosanct cult object in the sanctuaries of pre-Monarchic Israel. According to tradition, it was kept at Shiloh and brought to Jerusalem. Another ark was kept at Beth-el[6] yet another at Gideah in Benjamin[7] and there were at least another two in other places.
A list of other references in the Hebrew Bible to idolatrous practices, which only serves to illustrate their prevalence, appears in an Appendix to this chapter.
[1] And also 2 Chronicles 10:14-15.
[2] Hebrew Text of Kings (1902), cited in Glover, Hebrew Bible in Crisis - It Ain’t necessarily so, WEA course, Lecture 4 “The emergence of Yahweh”.
[3] Glover, Ibid.
[3] Dijkstra, op cit, 107.
[4] For 2 Kings 18.4, see the last entry in the Appendix to this chapter..
[5] Judges 20:27-28.
[6] 1 Samuel 14.16-18.