4. fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten
calf--The words are transposed, and the rendering should be, "he
framed with a graving tool the image to be made, and having poured the
liquid gold into the mould, he made it a molten calf." It is not said
whether it was of life size, whether it was of solid gold or merely a
wooden frame covered with plates of gold. This idol seems to have been
the god Apis, the chief deity of the Egyptians, worshipped at Memphis
under the form of a live ox, three years old. It was distinguished by a
triangular white spot on its forehead and other peculiar marks. Images
of it in the form of a whole ox, or of a calf's head on the end of a
pole, were very common; and it makes a great figure on the monuments
where it is represented in the van of all processions, as borne aloft
on men's shoulders.
they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of
the land of Egypt--It is inconceivable that they, who but a few
weeks before had witnessed such amazing demonstrations of the true God,
could have suddenly sunk to such a pitch of infatuation and brutish
stupidity, as to imagine that human art or hands could make a god that
should go before them. But it must be borne in mind, that though by
election and in name they were the people of God, they were as yet, in
feelings and associations, in habits and tastes, little, if at all
different, from Egyptians. They meant the calf to be an image, a
visible sign or symbol of Jehovah, so that their sin consisted not in a
breach of the FIRST
[Ex 20:3],
but of the SECOND commandment
[Ex 20:4-6].
JFB.
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