THE GOLDEN CALF. Some problems resolved. Alan Smith. Elibooks

Transcription

1 THE GOLDEN CALF Some problems resolved Alan Smith Elibooks

2 Alan Smith 5775 (2015) ("% Prefatory note This is not the story of the Golden Calf. It assumes that the reader is familiar with the story as told in the Bible, and is also familiar to some extent with the original Hebrew text. Parts of the story referred to are, in the main, those which lead to major problems and those relevant in attempting to solve them. A.S. Eli, Mount Ephraim, Israel, Adar 5775 In this edition I have added all the relevant verses at the end, to save the reader having to keep turning pages of a Chumash and searching for the exact wording of the text. Tishrey 5777.

3 THE GOLDEN CALF The Questions The story of the Golden Calf (Ex. 32:1 ff., Deut. 9:12 ff.) is well known, and parts need be repeated here only when we wish to examine the text carefully for details. On reading the story, three fundamental questions jump to mind which are not normally answered satisfactorily, if at all. 1. Just before he went up the mountain, Moses explained that he had left two people in charge, Aaron and Hur. If the people suddenly pounced on Aaron with a demand that he had no wish to accede to, surely the first thing to do was to consult with Hur. This is not mentioned, and it seems that he did not do so, presumably because Hur was not available to consult with. Why not? Where was Hur? 2. Aaron under pressure made the idol. Whatever excuse and justification, he was certainly not completely innocent (Deut. 9:20). He appears to have in some slight way at least tainted himself with idolatry. He might well be forgiven, but how could he then become High Priest? 3. Under pressure from the whole population, what could and should Aaron have done? The Midrash Midrash has a purpose, which we will not enter into here, but it does not state historical fact and is not to be taken too literally. (The reader is referred to the commentary of Rabbi Joseph Kara on 1-Samuel 1:17.) It is essentially intended for advanced students only, who fully understand the plain text, but since today, sadly, 3

4 it is taught as fact even to little children, we must mention it here and show how it fails to answer our problems in this instance. According to the midrash, Hur tried to stop the people from demanding an idol, and for this the people lynched him. He was thus unavailable to help Aaron. The latter reacted in the way he did for one of two reasons. Either he was afraid of following Hur, or he simply wanted to play for time until Moses returned. Helpful? Far from answering our problems, this midrash makes things worse. We have an accepted tradition that if pressured to commit any of the three most serious types of sin murder, idolatry or a serious sexual offence we are obliged to allow ourselves to be killed rather than submit. None of us can be sure of being able to stand up to this until tried in such a situation, so we cannot judge Aaron. In the circumstances he might be forgiven, but having failed this test he surely could not still be made High Priest! Further, there is no mention of Hur being lynched, nor of any punishment for this. After Moses s remark before ascending the mountain, Hur is never again mentioned at all! Such a crime by the people is overlooked? Surely the Torah should have mentioned it, especially as it is relevant to Aaron s entire behaviour! Thirdly, what was the reward of each? Hur allegedly gave his life to sanctify God and was rewarded by having his name sink into oblivion, while Aaron, a religious coward, was rewarded by being made High Priest! This simply does not make any sense. A second midrash, trying to help, makes things far, far worse. Aaron was so righteous that he was prepared to yield his portion of the Next World in order to save Israel in the current world! Once you talk about people willing to do wrong and lose their 4

5 portion in the Next World in order to justify doing some good in this, you are treading on the most dangerous ground there is. Such an attitude is totally unacceptable in absolutely anyone. We will leave the midrash for advanced scholars to interpret, and try to understand the story from the data given in the text. What did Aaron actually do? Let us examine Aaron s actions step by step, with help (where given) from the commentators. First we are told that the people (and not, as later, all the people ) congregated on Aaron, and asked him to make them an idol, since Moses, their only direct contact with God, had disappeared. So Aaron asked the people to bring the gold ornaments of their wives and children, to provide the gold needed. Here the commentators help. Aaron assumed that the wives and children would refuse to give up their ornaments, so he would not have the gold to make an idol. But not appreciating this, and assuming that he intended to make it, all the people brought their own instead! He had underestimated them. This explanation is quite acceptable and ties in well with the text. He took the gold, melted it in the fire, and then made it into the shape of a calf. Later, when he was afraid, he told Moses that he threw the gold into the fire and the calf came out, but we are told that he made it. There are two interpretations of the words used: one is that he made it in a mould, the other that he used a chisel. But it makes no difference to us which is correct, either way he made it, it did not make itself. Why? And here the commentators give us no proper answer. Why not continue in the same way? He made the calf, not for an idol but the reverse. He showed them how, in front of their eyes, 5

6 he took their own gold from their own ornaments and made it into the sort of thing they had seen the Egyptians worship as a god. How could anyone be so stupid as to imagine that a thing like this could be superhuman, or could possess any degree of holiness? Again he was wrong, they were that stupid. Here is the god that brought us out of Egypt they cried. Even the simple fact that they had left Egypt three months earlier and this thing had only just been made did not enter their heads. Aaron built an altar in front of it, to make fun of it, but that too was taken seriously. Finally, he came to the conclusion that they were in a state of high excitement and needed to cool down. What they all needed was a good night s sleep, they would wake up in the morning and realise how silly they had been the night before, just as a man wakes up and remembers with horror things he had said and done the previous night when under the effects of excess alcohol, things he would never dream of saying or doing when sober. So he announced Tomorrow there will be a festival to God. Of course (and this is generally agreed) he realised that the people thought he meant the idol let them think, he did not say that and did not mean that. He just wanted to get them to bed for a good night s sleep and all would be different in the morning. And again he was wrong they all got up extra early (in Hebrew there is a different expression for getting up in the morning and getting up especially early in the morning), offered sacrifices to the idol, ate and drank, and then got up ready to start an orgy. The Return of Moses At this point in our narrative the scene changes. Moses up the mountain had just been given the Two Tablets on which were 6

7 written the terms of the Contract with God. Then, instead of an amiable good-bye, the equivalent of a handshake, to be followed by a leisurely descent, he was given a shock he was told to hurry down because the people had just made an idol! It did not make much sense, but he obeyed, picking up Joshua on the way. Only when he came near enough to see what was actaually happening did the shock hit him with full impact. The main item of the Contract was broken by the people, making the Tablets worthless so in understandable fury he smashed them. Entering the camp, the first thing that he noticed was anarchy, Aaron was doing nothing, so he immediately took charge and dealt with the situation as best he could. He demanded an explanation from Aaron, but note this neither asked for nor spoke to Hur! We need not repeat the rest of the details, except to point out that when the Levites killed all those who worshipped the calf the total number they killed was about three thousand, which becomes relevant later in our discussion. Moses was given to understand that God was extremely angry and wished to destroy the people, and in particular Aaron. He then went back and prayed to God to forgive them both. God had said to Moses Your people have become corrupt and Moses replied Remember, they are your people too. God s Reaction Moses was partly, but not completely, successful. He obtained a reprieve for the people, and a pardon for Aaron, but! Aaron was later punished, and then forgiven. The people however were never forgiven, and Moses was told that whenever in the future they did anything wrong and were punished for it, each time a little extra punishment would be added for the sin of the Golden Calf. 7

8 Aaron s sin and punishment If Aaron merely made the calf in order to ridicule it and prevent the people from idolatry, what did he do so wrong that God wanted to destroy him? To understand this we must appreciate that there are different types of law given by God. Some are to be applied with common sense, but others are to be simply obeyed, without any attempt at reason. (Most are in between.) In the latter group are all the laws of ritual applied in the Sanctuary, mainly by the priests of whom Aaron was to be the first. Also there is the law given in the Ten Commandments only shortly before the incident, not to make an image, followed by a separate law not to worship one. Aaron disobeyed by making the image, even though he did so neither out of fear of being lynched, nor to play for time (which would be invalid excuses) but to ridicule it and prevent the people from turning to idolatry. Aaron himself was not tainted with idolatry. His punishment came later when two of his sons brought external fire in circumstances that appeared to justify this (here is not the place to explain), against the strict rule, and were instantly killed. What could and should Aaron have done? Aaron was an excellent deputy or assistant leader, but was useless as a leader. We see how even as a temporary one he failed in the first requirement to understand the mentality of the people he had to lead. But this itself was not a sin. We see how the people congregated on Aaron, but when he told them to bring gold, all the people brought gold. Initially just a large group came, but he had implied that it was alright if they brought gold, so all the rest followed. In the final result, the 8

9 Levites killed all the actual worshippers three thousand, out of a population of six hundred thousand, or one half of one per cent! So why were all the people guilty? Not for active worship, but for condoning, bringing gold, and for being passive and not objecting. We may justly assume that at least all the people who first demanded the idol worshipped it (with perhaps a few exceptions influenced by Aaron s mockery of it), so Aaron was approached by a group of less than three thousand enough to frighten him, and it may have seemed to him the lot. But we ask why they approached Aaron and ask him to make it? Why did they not simply make one themselves? There were, as we learn later, many expert goldsmiths, and Aaron is not numbered among them. The answer is that a relatively small group wanted this not just for themselves but for the whole population to follow them. They approached Aaron because they needed him. If Aaron did what they wanted, all the rest would follow, as he was respected. This was his strength that he did not see. There was a small group of rebels, and there was the silent majority. Had he stood firm and refused, the silent majority would have been behind him and the small group would not have had their support which they felt that they needed. Perhaps they would have formed a breakaway group so what? They would have been punished, but would not have imposed sin on the entire population. Aaron failed to realise his full strength, and he weakened, not in giving in to them, but in trying to find a way out instead of standing firm against them. Who was the leader of the revolt? After the incident, Moses was apologetic to God. He felt that having taken responsibility for the people he had failed, and he was prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences. If God 9

10 would not fully forgive, remove me from your book! The reply was that this was not justified. Moses had not been able to deal with the people because he was not there at the time, and his absence was not his fault but because God had called him up to the mountain. Moses had done his best and left Aaron and Hur, his two most trusted assistants, in charge. God would deal with the one responsible. A revolt like this must have had a leader, or at least an inciter, the chief sinner against God, and he, the one who has sinned against me, would be removed from the book. What do we know about this person? To say that as his name has been removed we know nothing about him is not quite true. First of all, for his name to be removed it had to be there in the first place, and if removal is a serious matter it had to appear as that of someone of importance, a high up. He appeared because of good things he had done, but this terrible sin cancelled all that out. So we know something about him, but who was he? There is a legend about why the Western Wall of the Temple (not that today of the Mount) still existed in Talmudic times. When the Temple was burned, its very high walls still remained. A Roman emperor then asked four generals to pull them down, one wall each, to show his greatness, that he had pulled down these great walls. But one of the generals objected, if all the walls were pulled down people later would say that they never existed. He suggested (and the emperor accepted) that one wall be left standing, to show how all the others had been pulled down. Here too, if someone s name was completely removed, nobody would know that his name had ever appeared in the first place. So we would expect some reference to him to remain, as an important person who had once done good, but his name would then cease to appear because later he went so terribly wrong. 10

11 The man who disappeared At Rephidim, just before reaching Sinai, we find that Moses had two close assistants, Aaron and Hur, not to mention Joshua who led the battle. We had met Aaron, but who were the others? Later we are told who Joshua was and quite a lot about him, but not so Hur. We do not even know the name of his father or the tribe to which he belonged. He and Aaron helped Moses at Rephidim, and Moses when he went up the mountain left him in charge along with Aaron. He then disappears completely, and is never mentioned again. (Bezalel s grandfather may, but may not, have been the same Hur.) Even when Moses saw the idol he set upon Aaron but apparently neither spoke to nor asked for Hur. Could this be a hint in the Torah? It fits the requirements, and if he was the guilty one it answers our first question, explaining why Aaron could not consult him he was on the other side! Did he lead the mob? Probably. As one of those left in charge he was in a position to rally a large measure of support for any project. Was it his own idea or did he jump onto someone else s idea? What happened to him in the end? We are not told, we do not know, and we are apparently not meant to know. Conclusion All the above offers an explanation that answers our main questions. There may be a better explanation, the true facts may even be completely different (though certainly not the ones we are usually taught), but in the absence of any better one this may be regarded as at least the most probable. * 11

12 Relevant Verses The following are the veress relevant to the discussion. (They are not intended to contain the whole story.) ËÎ ßÊÓÞ AɽL DÆHUKÉIÅ_ÃÝ XYÑL ÝXeÌDÊÔ^ÃÝFÉKÅiÉJIÃÓX Î ÈÐ ßÊÓÞ AÒ½JÉIÑFÅI_KUHÎ ÒÎYVÝLÆUVÑK _KÆ?ÎHÓÒeJÐL_H iýxìdêô[ãýfékåéjìhédê ÇÎ ÆÑ ßÊÓÞ X[ÝDÓÅÂ[KÊ ÔgÃÝFÉKÅ?ÑK ÒkL LÉ ÑjIÉLdH[KÊ ÝXLÉLÉ?ÔHÓ ßJÈ^JÝLÑ ÉYJIÃÓ I_IÃÆ?ÎH] ÒeL LÉ ÅUÝ^K[KÊ Å Ý[JIFÅ IÎgHÅLÉ XÕÎeIÕLÙDÑ TXÐDÑIÎ Ý[JIFÅ ÒÎgHÉWÑEÅ TÊÎLÑIÅ AD½ÑÉLÎ_LÉ?ÉJÓXÕD YKÈLÎ Å_WÑ ÒHÎeKÝDÛHÓÚJÝ^JÅIÓTXÕjLÑE JÉ ÒXJÐÎIßÂÕDÆXÒYJÐÎIÕDTÒeJÐÎIDÕÎ^IÕDËLÅDTiÝJIFÅÆeLÉLYKÉÎ^IÓDËHÕTXÜUÝLbÔeÃÝFÉKÅiÒJÉIÑFÅÝJÓÅ[Â[KÊ Æ AνLÑ IÅ XÅÎYHÆ LÉDÊ AÔ½ÃÝFÉKÅ?ÑJÅXÅÎYHÆL[KÊÒXJÉÎIÕDËLÅDTÝ^JIFÅÆYLÉLYKÉÎ_IÓDËHÕ?ßJÅÒeL LÉ?ÑL]TXÜUÝLbDßH[KÊ Ç ifîjjéwñeå ÉJ^[IÅ XeÝDÓÅ^Â[KÊ ÉXLÐIaKÓ ÑJÇ^I XÉYIKF K[KÊ ÍJÝeJÌKT TDßÃÅ ÝKÛ[L[KÊ ÒgLÈL[HÓ Ì^KdH[KÊ È AÒHνLÝDÛHÓÚJÝ_JÅIÓFXYÑE JÉÝ_JIFÅÑeIÅLÝDKHÎ AݽLÌLÓYLÎÎKÑÇ_KÌÝeKÓÅÂ[KÊTÔÃÝFÉKÅÅ[LÝDÜH[KÊÊÎXLÕLÙDÑ KÌYITDËHÓÔJÆ_H[KÊÔeÃÝFÉKÅÅUÝ^K[KÊ É XÓYOÜL[KÊDeßLIDÊÑ^ÃÐEÅJÑiÒL LÉÆJI[I[KÊÒÎXHÓLÑDIXIYHUK[KÊßeWÑà X^ÑF K[KÊßeLÝGÌL_HÓTXÓÎjH]DIK[KÊ Ê AܽIÌKÛDÑ ÆÑ ßÊÓÞ É_LÅLÍFÌ ÊÎYLÑL LßÅ_IÆIÉ?ÎH] ÉXJYKÉ Ò^L LÉ YFDÑ É_LKL?ÉJÓ ÔeÃÝFÉKÅ?ÑJÅ iéjiãó ÝJÓÅ[Â[KÊ ÅÐ AɽLÑÃÈ DÇ AÅX½É YLÝDÆÎ_H] ÒeL LÉ?ßJÅ LfD ^KÈLÎ iélfkåîxhõãèfåøykåýkì_hî?ñkåôeãýfékåýjóå^â[kê ÆÐ ÎeHÑXÝDÓÅ^Â[KÊ ÇÐ AD½ÑÉLÎ_LÉ?ÉJÓXÕD YKÈLÎ Å_WÑ ÒHÎeKÝDÛHÓÚJÝ^JÅIÓTXÕjLÑE JÉ AɽJYKÉÑJÇ_I LÉÅYIÛI[KÊIeIÅLÆXÉ^IÐHÑDIKÅLÊÎXHÑ?XÕDfH[KÊXÜYLÝLbDßHÉÆeLÉLËÎ^HÓDÑiÒJÉLÑÝ[KÓÃÅLÊ ÈÐ AÒ½JÉÎIÓLÜDTÉYLÛDÓHIDÑÔeÃÝFÉKÅÉ^à LÝDÙ?ÎH]ÅXXÉ K YOÝLÙÎ_H] ÒeL LÉ?ßJÅiÉJIÃÓÅUÝ[K[KÊ ÉÐ Í ÒÎÝÆÈ AÅʽHÉKÉß_I LTÔYÃÝFÉKÅÈ_K DT?ÒKUÑ]I^KbDßJÅLÊDXÈÎHÓDIKÉDÑÈYÃÅDÓ]LÎDÎØaK`KÅDßHÉÔgÃÝFÉKÅDÆX Ð 12