SUMMARY
While Moses is on Sinai receiving instructions for building the tabernacleThe tabernacle, a word meaning "tent," was a portable worship place for the Hebrew people after they left Egypt. It was said to contain the ark of the covenant. The plans for the tabernacle are dictated by God in Exodus 26. More, the people form their own god.
ANALYSIS
The creationCreation, in biblical terms, is the universe as we know or perceive it. Genesis says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In the book of Revelation (which speaks of end times) the author declares that God created all things and... More of the golden calf was an abandonment of the promises of God. Instead of asking God, “Why?” as so many lament Psalms do, the people created their own god. They don’t so much abandon the old story as co-opt it. There is still the language of being brought out of Egypt but the celebration that ensues is quite different. The preceding chapters of instruction for building the tabernacle may have at one point circulated apart from the story of rebellion at Sinai, but in their present location they sharpen the indictment of Israel for its construction of the golden calf. The gold that could be used in building the tabernacle is used to construct an idolIdolatry is the worship of something other than the true God. An idol may be a cult image, an idea, or an object made of wood or stone. Ome of the Ten Commandments specifically prohibits the worship of graven images or idols; this concern is... More. They want a god who will go before them (32:1), but at the same time God is announcing to Moses how the continued presence of God will be made available (29:42-46). Israel was to make sacrifices and burnt offerings, but they were doing so in the wrong place, not before the tabernacle but at a place of their own making. Worship turned to revelry. The half-truths they told themselves were in fact full-blown falsehood.
Each generation of God’s people must stand before this text and investigate its own behavior. Disobedience and infidelity are not always crass idolatry. We may be giving ourselves false comfort when we think this text is only about making a statue-likely a small one at that. Whatever the vehicle, the issue is the broken relationship with God and the abandonment of the promises of God. Our unqualified insistence on autonomy can be an idol every bit as separating from God as was the golden calf. The significance of the breach does not reside in some fussiness about specific forms and locales of worship. Some die in the aftermath of the disobedience (32:28), but the greatest threat in the narrative is that God would no longer be present.
