NOTES for Exo 32:1-35
The story of the golden calf is revealing in many respects. The most interesting thing about it is that those who made it did not at all intend to betray Yahweh, to betray the God of Abraham and Moses. They wanted the very God who had brought them out of Egypt to stand before them. To stand before them visibly, tangibly, perceptibly. In such a way that no one would have any doubts: God is really here, among them.
He had not abandoned them; He had not gone off somewhere onto the mountain with Moses. From there everything is simple: with one impulse the people cast something for themselves, and this something takes on the form of a calf, the image of the Egyptian god Apis, whose symbol was that same notorious calf. Aaron personally finishes the casting, so that the God who brought the people out of Egypt will look more beautiful. Nonsense? Absurdity? Madness? Some of each, perhaps. The main point is the simple fact that the people had still not entered into the covenant.
Because the covenant that had been made presupposed something very clear: from now on each person builds his own relationship with God, and each person is responsible for it himself. And suddenly the question is heard again: where is Moses? Where has he disappeared? And where is his God? This is where the problem lies. Instead of our God, my God, it is his God. Moses' God. Just as it had been up to then: the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. After the Sinai covenant it was supposed to become: the God of Israel.
Of all Israel precisely, not only of Moses. But that did not happen: Moses disappears from sight, and with him God disappears too - and again it is his God, the God of Moses. He is still not the God of Israel; He has still not become so. It is no accident that God proposes that Moses abandon the people, leave them to their own fate, which in the wilderness would certainly have turned out very sadly for them, and begin everything from the beginning.
With a new people who will come from Moses. What, in fact, remains if the examination has been failed, if after all the words spoken at Sinai, after all the promises made at the conclusion of the covenant-union, the God of Moses still has not become Israel's God? It is Moses who persuades and implores God to try again, to give the people another chance. God is already ready to begin everything with a clean slate, but He yields to Moses. He yields to His prophet, His servant. This is not surprising: God often yields to someone who asks Him for something, especially if the one asking is himself ready to take part in what he wants. God agrees to give the people another chance, a chance to become His people. A chance for Israel to allow Him, the God of Moses, to become the God of Israel.