Angels and Idols

What exactly was the sin involved in the making of the Eigel haZahav, the Golden Calf?

Rashi (Ex 32:1 “asher yeilekhu“, “asher he’elanu“) says it was actual idolatry.

The Kuzari (1:97) says it was a representation to be used as a conduit between man and G-d. A Moses replacement. Not so much a violation against the second and third of the Rambam’s articles of faith (Divine Uniqueness and Divine Incorporeality), but a violation of the fifth — that we are not to worship anything in the role of middleman between G-d and ourselves.
The distinction between the two may boil down to choosing which phrase in the Torah is the primary motivation given by the Jews.

The people saw that Moshe was late to come down from the mountain; the people ganged up on Aharon, and they said to him: “Arise, make us a god who shall go before us; for as for this man Moshe who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what happened to him.”

Shemos 32:1

Rashi comments on the words “a god who shall go before us”, and the Kuzari writes about their worrying about Moshe’s non-return.
I could make a historical argument for the Kuzari’s position. In Egyptian mythology, the minor deity that purportedly pulled the cart of prayers up to heaven and blessings down to mankind was Apis, a bull (or man with a bull head). Oxen were towing animals in their society. In Egypt, Apis was the courier of prayers to the other gods, and of blessings to man. It is quite plausible that they thought that without Moshe, they needed a new conduit to G-d, and therefore turned to Apis.

Apis’s holiday was on the 15th of the 8th month. There were two temples at the far sides of Egypt, Memphis and Heliopolis, that had representations of Apis, golden bulls, in front of them.

Yerav’am, when he founded the Malkhus Yisrael, needed to establish a new religion that would free them from being tied to Yehudah and the Temple in Yerushalayim. Among his changes were that he shifted Sukkos from the seventh month to the eighth, and he built temples in Beis-El and Dan with bulls in front of them. It would seem that a pretty conscious imitation of Apis worship was still around.

Thus, the notion that the golden calf was a product of the same mentality, and thus an attempt to replace Moses would explain why they chose the animal they did. The connection between Yerav’am’s religion and the eigel is made explicitly by Tanakh. Yerav’am’s language on consecrating his bulls even parallels that of the Jews when the eigel was completed:

And he [Aharon] received it [the gold] from their hands, and shaped it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf; and they said: “These are your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

– Ibid. v. 4

The king [Yirav’am took counsel, and made two golden calves; and he said unto them: ‘You have gone up to Yerushalaim too much, here are your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”

– Melakhim I 12:28

Lehavdil, the keruvim on the aron, that the golden calf as well as the Northern Kingdom’s bulls are the product of a false understanding of the keruv concept.

The keruvim had the faces of children, either one boy and one girl or two boys, and a pair of long bird-like wings that arced over the ark. We do not know what else — if anything — they had. Could have been just a pair of busts, heads with wings and nothing else; or perhaps an entire body. When the Jews got along with each other, they faced each other. When they did not, the keruvim turned away from each other. This would only be seen by the Kohein Gadol on Yom Kippur and by soldiers who saw the ark during war. I assume, therefore, that it served as a call to repentance on Yom Kippur or when preparing for battle.

These are different than the keruv as discussed in Bereishis, who guards the entrance to Eden while holding a sword of revolving fire.

It is also different than the keruv as implied by Yechezqeil. In 1:10, the angels called chayos (Living Beings) present at the Divine Chariot are described as having four faces: that of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. However, in 10:15 we’re told that a chayah is a keruv, in the two visions he them saw identically (10:22) and the keruv has the faces of a keruv, a man, a lion and an eagle. The face of the keruv replaces that of the ox. This implies that a keruv is an ox-like thing, that being the corresponding face. (Even though “chayos” has a more common meaning of “wild animal” to the exclusion of “beheimos”, domesticated ones like oxen. Then again, people aren’t chayos either, and one of the faces of the chayah is human.)

The Chaldeans worshiped a god called Kirub, who was a bull with a human face. So the linguistics point to this interpretation as well. (It also supports Maimonides’ assumption that idolatry began with the worship of G-d’s “entourage” as a way to honor Him.)

I would therefore suggest that this middleman god is a single thread of pagan thought — be it Apis, Kirub, the eigel, or bulls at Malkhus Yisrael. They are a misunderstanding of the notion of keruvim.

Yerav’am’s sin therefore carries an echo of Korach’s. The medrash tells us that Korach brought Moshe a garment entirely made of techeiles (blue wool) and asked whether it needed tzitzis. When Moshe replied that it did, Korach scoffed. If the whole garment being blue is insufficient, what difference would one thread make? Korach tried to declare the whole world holy and thereby leave nothing sacred.

Yerav’am took the two keruvim and placed them at opposite sides of his country. The Divine Presence would appear in a pillar of smoke from between the keruvim in the Mishkan and Beis haMiqdash. Now, Yerav’am declares, that holiness is everywhere.

There were two utensils in the first Beis haMidash that had images on them — the aron had keruvim and the legs to the laver that Shelomo made. Both share a law — they were not made of a separate piece welded on. The keruvim had to be of the same gold, part of the lid of the aron; not welded, but of the same piece. Thus making it clear that they were secondary to the Torah and not worship-worthy gods in their own right.

As the Rambam explains the birth of idolatry:

“In the days of Enosh, the people fell into gross error, and the counsel of the wise men of the generation became foolish. Enosh himself was among those who erred. Their error was as follows: “Since God”, they said, “created these stars and spheres to guide the world, set them on high and allotted unto them honor, and since they are ministers who minister before Him, they deserve to be praised and glorified, and honor should be rendered them; and it is the will of God, blessed be He, that men should aggrandise and honor those whom He aggrandised and honored – just as a king desires that respect should be shown to the officers who stand before Him, and thus honor is shown to the king.” When this idea arose in their minds, they began to erect temples to the stars, offered up sacrifices to them, praised and glorified them in speech, and prostrated themselves before them – their purpose, according to their perverse notions, being to obtain the Creator’s favor. This was the root of idolatry, and this was what the idolators, who knew its fundamentals, said….

– Laws of Idolatry 1:1

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  1. MP says:

    The Kuzari (1:97) says it was a representation to be used as a conduit between man and G-d. A Moses replacement.
    Also see the comments of RaMBaN on the relevant p’suqim in Sh’mos 32.

  2. Ilana says:

    Malbim points out that Yeravam lived in Egypt for years after fleeing from Shlomo, and suggests he was directly influenced by the Apis temples at Memphis and Heliopolis.

  3. Arie Folger says:

    Now connect some more dots, as the Ramban does: how about linking the vision of Yechezkel to the verse in Shemot 24:11 : And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand; and they beheld God …, and linking that, in turn, to the Golden Calf?

    The net result would be an interesting claim that the Egyptian Apis, the Chaldean Kirub, Yeravam’s bulls and the Golden Calf are all possibly derived from one of the appearances on the Heavenly Chariot (the Jews made the Golden Calf *after* being exposed to the particular revelation described in Shemot 24:11!), and that that which makes all the above idol worship is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Chayot and our relationship to them. IOW, it’s based on truth, but it’s deeply, deeply wrong to either represent them physically, or to pray to them, and the descent into idolatry as described by Maimonides is a lot more factual than we usually imagine, now that we see it may sometimes be based on the actual revelation of the Heavenly Chariot. And it’s still deeply, deeply wrong, profoundly idolatrous to have even a fraction of that mistaken attitude towards the keruv/chaya.

  4. micha says:

    RAF,

    If anything, you poked a hole in my idea. I was claiming that this reinforced the notion that the eigel was an attempt to replace the missing Moshe. You just showed that the concept of keruv held a different place in their mindset than did Moshe — as they were each present at Har Sinai.

    In any case, I wonder how similar the Merkavah was to what was scene at Har Sinai, or for that matter how similar each of the zekeinim’s perception were to each other. Some details must have been the same, or else the pesuqim describing just one vision wouldn’t make sense. But isn’t the vision of a nevu’ah something the navi’s own mind creates around an experience in order to clothe it in the familiar and comprehensible? And “ein shenei nevi’im misnab’im beaignon echad” — so those images shouldn’t be expected to be identical.

    Maybe what was seen at Har Sinai didn’t include chayos, or if it did, the chayos looked to them very differently than they looked to nevi’im living centuries later, products of an autonomous (and declining) Israel — in contrast to products of slavery and overt miracles.

  5. Arie Folger says:

    The Esteemed Blog Owner wrote:

    . I was claiming that this reinforced the notion that the eigel was an attempt to replace the missing Moshe. You just showed that the concept of keruv held a different place in their mindset than did Moshe — as they were each present at Har Sinai.

    Not necessarily. The People of Israel, in their still naive, barely-out-of-idolatrous-Egypt mindset (cf. Ibn Ezra about taking Egypt out of the Jew), may very well have conceived of Moshe as a kind of demigod, so that the comparison is apt. In fact, since the function of the Merkava Elyona is to bear the Divine Throne, and we have statements like Avot Hen Hen haMerkava, which is understood to include all the righteous (see Messilat Yesharim, here), their understanding was arguably correct.

    So, they understand Moshe as part of the Heavenly Chariot, and want to replace him with a keruv/bull, another one of the four faces of the Chayot.

    In any case, I wonder how similar the Merkavah was to what was scene at Har Sinai

    Hey, I did not draw that analogy, Ramban did.

    or for that matter how similar each of the zekeinim’s perception were to each other. Some details must have been the same, or else the pesuqim describing just one vision wouldn’t make sense. But isn’t the vision of a nevu’ah something the navi’s own mind creates around an experience in order to clothe it in the familiar and comprehensible? And “ein shenei nevi’im misnab’im beaignon echad” — so those images shouldn’t be expected to be identical.

    Could have been similar enough. I guess that that is what Ramban implicitly claims.

    Maybe what was seen at Har Sinai didn’t include chayos, or if it did, the chayos looked to them very differently than they looked to nevi’im living centuries later, products of an autonomous (and declining) Israel — in contrast to products of slavery and overt miracles.

    Again, my comment was based on Ramban, and he has some interesting textual clues. That this interpretation makes the egel (and, inter alia, the cherubim on the kaporet of the aron) easier to understand, makes it therefore more cogent, more attractive and more likely closer to the truth.

    Re: better understanding the aron, I refer you to two verses (there are several more). One is השמים כסאי והארץ הדם רגלי, איזה מקום מנוחתי ואיזה בית אשר תבנו לי, and the other one is the 6th chapter of Yesha’yahu, where he testifies that שוליו מלאים את ההיכל, thus showing us that the aron is like the Merkava, whereupon the throne rests when G”d reveals Himself, and in a sense, while the entire earth is G”d’s footstool, the Beit haMiqdash is a particular footstool.

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