Thou Shalt Not Bow Down Thyself to Them

In our family scripture study yesterday, my eight-year-old son asked about the golden calf and whether the Israelites really made it and then worshipped it. When I confirmed this was the case, he got a funny look on his face and said, “That’s just weird.” I think most of us would agree. The account says this: “And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.” The people were anxious that Moses had not come back after about forty days. It seems as if they supposed they would never see him again. Perhaps they assumed he had been killed by a wild beast or starved to death or had some other accident that took his life. They may have been afraid without their leader, and so they sought something they could rely on. Inexplicably, Aaron complied with their demand: “And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:1-4). It doesn’t seem like they were trying to abandon the Lord, for Aaron subsequently built an altar and declared they would have a feast day to Jehovah. But they obviously forgot their commitment to not make any graven images that they had agreed to follow, saying, “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). This was the commandment they then received: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” The Lord also emphasized again to Moses, “Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold” (Exodus 20:4-5, 22-23). It was made clear that they Lord did not want them to make golden calves and to call them their god.  

Interestingly, it would seem that the reason they had this gold in the first place to make into a golden calf is because they took it from the Egyptians under the Lord’s direction. He had declared, “And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty: But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:21-22). This is exactly what they did: “And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians” (Exodus 12:35-36). It may be that the Lord was giving the Israelites what they should have been paid as workers while being slaves, and this must have been why they had these golden earrings that they were able to melt into a calf. Perhaps they reasoned that since the Lord had given them this gold, giving it up to make an image to worship Him was acceptable. It was perhaps, as they reasoned, a sacrifice for Him. Still, it is hard to understand why they wanted to do this given His clear direction not to. And the Lord could have not given them this treasure in the first place, but He let them have it along with the temptation it brought.

That said, of course we have our own “golden calves” that we worship today and which the Israelites might look upon from their ancient time and say, “That’s just weird.” If they saw us all staring down at a metal device in our hands, hours upon hours of the day, even walking around looking at them, the people of Moses might say to us, “Well, we weren’t they only ones who bowed down to metal objects!” President Kimball put it this way in his famous message on idol worship: “In spite of our delight in defining ourselves as modern, and our tendency to think we possess a sophistication that no people in the past ever had—in spite of these things, we are, on the whole, an idolatrous people—a condition most repugnant to the Lord.” One example he gave was this: “One young man, when called on a mission, replied that he didn’t have much talent for that kind of thing. What he was good at was keeping his powerful new automobile in top condition. He enjoyed the sense of power and acceleration, and when he was driving, the continual motion gave him the illusion that he was really getting somewhere. All along, his father had been content with saying, ‘He likes to do things with his hands. That’s good enough for him.’ Good enough for a son of God? This young man didn’t realize that the power of his automobile is infinitesimally small in comparison with the power of the sea, or of the sun; and there are many suns, all controlled by law and by priesthood, ultimately—a priesthood power that he could have been developing in the service of the Lord. He settled for a pitiful god, a composite of steel and rubber and shiny chrome.” We all are tempted by similar idols today, and the example of the children of Israel reminds us that we must stay committed to worshipping the true and living God above all else.