Exodus 32:4

4. Fashioned it with a graving tool This is the most natural import of the unpointed Hebrew text, but seems hardly in harmony with the next statement, which is not correctly translated after he had made it, but, simply, and he made it a molten calf . It is manifestly incongruous to speak of forming a molten calf with a graving tool . Hence many critics propose to read חרישׂ , a money bag, or purse, instead of חרשׂ , here translated graving tool, which occurs elsewhere only at Isaiah 8:1, and there means a pen, or stylus . The statement would then be: And he received (the earrings) from their hand, and collected ( ויצר , from צור , to bind or collect together in one mass) it (the gold) in a bag, and made it a molten calf . It is no valid objection to this view to ask, with Keil, “Why should Aaron first bind up the golden earrings in a bag?” For it may with equal force be answered, Why should he not? What better or more appropriate way of receiving and retaining the large amount of gold until it was converted into the golden idol? This, on the whole, is more satisfactory than the view which supplies in thought a wooden mould or model after the word fashioned, for such an idea would have required some clearer form of statement; more satisfactory, also, than to assume that the molten calf was cast over a carved image of wood, or that it was finished up by means of a graver’s tool after it had been cast . On this last supposition, the graver’s work should have been mentioned after, not before, the fusion of the golden ornaments .

According to Joshua 24:14; Ezekiel 20:7-8; Ezekiel 23:3; Ezekiel 23:8, Israel had been contaminated with Egyptian idolatry, and the most natural explanation of the construction of this image in the form of a calf is, that it was modelled after the form of Apis, the sacred bull which was worshipped at Memphis. See note and cut at Exodus 8:26, page 406 . It is hardly credible that during their long sojourn in Egypt the leading men of Israel had not become familiar with the worship of the sacred bull. But it is to be noticed that they did not worship the golden idol as an Egyptian god, but exclaimed before it, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. The plural here, as in Exodus 32:1, does not oblige us to translate and explain the words in a polytheistic sense. The next verse shows that they worshipped Jehovah under the symbol of a calf, and so violated the second rather than the first commandment of the decalogue. See notes on Exodus 20:4-5. Exodus 32:8; Exodus 32:8 of this chapter shows that they did not thus ignorantly worship, but knew that they were violating one of the commandments.