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Aaron replied, “Take off the golden earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He received their offering, and fashioning it with a tool, made a molten calf. Then they cried out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you[a] up from the land of Egypt.”(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 32:4–5 Who brought you…a feast of the Lord: it seems that the golden calf was intended as an image, not of another god, but of the Lord, whose strength was symbolized by the strength of a young bull. The Israelites, however, had been forbidden to represent the Lord under any visible form. Cf. 20:4. In the tenth century Jeroboam made golden calves for the shrines at Bethel and Dan, presumably to function as thrones for the Lord as the ark did in Jerusalem (see 1 Kgs 12:27–30).

Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings(A) that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol(B) cast in the shape of a calf,(C) fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,[a](D) Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”(E)

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Footnotes

  1. Exodus 32:4 Or This is your god; also in verse 8