How Did They Sin with the Golden Calf After Receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai?

My friend asks:

"Hello, I have been asked a question that has been bothering me for a long time. The Israelites witnessed the Ten Plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, and the event at Mount Sinai, so how could it be that they sinned with the golden calf? And what sense does it make to worship an idol after such a grand revelation? Thank you."

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Hello, my friend, and thank you for your question.

It is initially important to recognize that the holy Torah is meticulous with the righteous, holding them to a very high standard. Moses struck a rock instead of speaking to it, and for this, it was said to him: "Because you did not trust me enough to honor me as holy" (Numbers 20:12). In the book of Joshua, it is said about the Israelites: "But the Israelites were unfaithful in regard to the devoted things; Achan took some of them. So the Lord's anger burned against Israel" (Joshua 7:1), even though only Achan son of Carmi stole from the devoted things. However, because the people did not take care to ensure against the devoted things and did not protest against it, it was considered as if the entire community had sinned. From this, learn how meticulous the Torah is with the actions of the generation that received the Torah. Therefore, the Midrashim of our sages severely criticize and generalize about the entire nation of Israel for the sin of the golden calf so that we learn to avoid such a grave act.

However, in truth, there is no reason to think that the Israelites would err in believing in another idol or a golden image after witnessing the greatest revelation and the Ten Plagues, about which even the wise men of the Egyptian idols had to admit: "This is the finger of God" (Exodus 8:15).

At the splitting of the Red Sea, it is clearly stated about the Israelites: "And they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses" (Exodus 14:31). At Mount Sinai, they declared: "The people all responded together, 'We will do everything the Lord has said'" (Exodus 19:8).

The event at Mount Sinai was so powerful that the people feared they would die from the force of prophecy hearing Hashem's voice as He spoke the Ten Commandments: "They said to Moses, 'Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die'" (Exodus 20:15). Thus you learn that even the mountain burning to the heart of the heavens, the sounds and the flashes were not as frightening as the voice of Hashem that spoke to the entire nation in prophecy until their souls left them.

Therefore, even from a narrative chronological perspective, it is inconceivable to suspect the Israelites of idolatry after the events the Torah testified about.

Now, I will address your question, while correcting three very common mistakes regarding the sin of the golden calf.

1. Did you know that during the sin of the golden calf, the sinners worshiped the God of Israel?

Many are unaware that the Torah never stated that in the sin of the golden calf they suddenly worshipped another god. Let's not forget that Aaron the priest was forced to construct the golden calf, and it is explicit in the text that Aaron the priest declared: "When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, 'Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord'" (Exodus 32:5).

Aaron the priest clearly told the sinners of the golden calf that the calf was built to Hashem, the God of Israel. Ramban explains similarly: "He got up and built an altar and proclaimed, 'Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord', that they might sacrifice to the unique name on the altar he himself built for His name, that they may not build altars of their own, and that their intentions with their sacrifices be solely for Hashem alone."

Even the sinners of the golden calf testified that they intended to worship the God of Israel through it, when they declared: "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt" (Exodus 32:4). Even "Beit HaLevi" on Parashat Ki Tissa explains at length that they thought to connect to the God of Israel through the image of the calf.

The Bible reports that much later, this sin was repeated. During the division of the kingdoms, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who was king in Israel, built golden calves to keep the tribes from going up to Jerusalem: "After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to the people, 'It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." (1 Kings 12:26).

Again we see that the purpose of building golden calf idols was not to worship other gods, but to worship the God of Israel. This is, of course, a very severe sin of idolatry to create an image for Hashem ("idolatry" is called thusly from the word strangeness, the custom of the pagans). The sinners of the calf in the desert sinned because they did not wait for Moses and tried to worship Hashem in a forbidden manner.

To understand this matter, one must correct another common mistake. Unlike what many mistakenly think, the Egyptians did not pray to the idols themselves. They used the idols they created as representations intended to symbolize the gods they believed were in the heavens. The reason the Torah prohibits creating an image for the God of Israel is because the true God is infinite, is present everywhere and does not have a body or body-like form, so any attempt to express His existence through an image or drawing is considered a form of degradation and personification. For this reason, in the event at Mount Sinai, they did not see any image of Hashem.

So, why did they sin with the golden calf?

The Torah recounts that Moses ascended Mount Sinai and stayed there for forty days. The people waited for him, and when they saw that Moses did not return, many thought he was disqualified from being a prophet of Hashem, killed, and would no longer return to lead them. This is what the sinners said: "As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him" (Exodus 32:1). Rashi explains based on the Midrash that Satan showed them a vision of Moses' lifeless body in the heavens to test them.

Aaron the priest knew that Moses would return as promised and tried to delay the sinners who pressed him to build them an image. Therefore, he told them to wait for the next day: "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord" (Exodus 32:5).

2. Did you know how many people sinned with the golden calf?

After Moses descended from Mount Sinai, he called out, "Whoever is for the Lord, come to me." The tribe of Levi joined immediately and was commanded to go through the camp and kill all the sinners with the calf. And how many sinners were killed?

The Israelites numbered at their departure from Egypt "about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children" (Exodus 12:37), so a simple estimate would imply there were at least about 3 million people among Israel. Given such a large nation, one might expect that over a million would have been killed for the sin of the calf (a third of the people), or at least several hundred thousand.

But the Torah provides a surprising data: "The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died" (Exodus 32:28). That's not even one percent of the nation!

Although later Hashem struck the people with a plague over the calf (Exodus 32:35), it does not appear that many were killed, since later in the book of Numbers, also known as the "Book of the Census" because it lists the tribes of the nation, the Torah records again a number of 600,000 men besides women and children (Numbers 1:46).

However, if only a few thousand sinned with the golden calf out of millions, why did the Torah blame the entire nation of Israel for the sin of the golden calf, to the point that Moses had to plea for mercy on their behalf from Hashem so they wouldn't perish in the wilderness?

The explanation is that the Israelite people did not protest against the rebellious sinners of the calf and did not defend Aaron from them. From the Torah we see that when Moses rebuked Aaron for the sin of the calf, Aaron replied: "Do not be angry, my lord. You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, 'Make us gods...'" Aaron clarifies he did not want to create the idol and was forced to do so because of the wicked among the people.

The Talmud recounts (Sanhedrin 7a) that the sinners initially killed the prophet Chur who stood against them before Aaron's eyes. Aaron, seeing this, thought to himself: "If I do not listen to them, they will also kill me, and then the verse will be fulfilled in them: 'If both priest and prophet are slain in the temple of the Lord,' and there will be no atonement for them forever, so better they worship a calf and perhaps they may achieve atonement through repentance." For this reason, our sages called Aaron's act "a sin for a heavenly purpose," a sin permitted for the sake of saving all of Israel (yet not allowed for the sake of saving individuals).

Since the people of Israel watched the calf worshipers without protesting and did not protect Aaron from them, the entire nation was blamed for the sin.

To bring this closer to your heart, imagine, by way of parable, that the Messiah arrives to redeem Israel, builds for us the Third Temple, and ascends Mount Sinai for 40 days to receive prophecy, during which time about 3,000 sinners enter the Temple and construct a golden idol and dance around it, while the entire nation watches without stopping them. For this reason, the whole nation was blamed for the sin of the golden calf (however, it is possible to justify the Israelites by the fact that they did not know if Moses would return from Mount Sinai, and doubts, as noted, naturally cause inaction against sinners).

3. The sinners — the mixed multitude

The tradition of the Oral Torah reveals to us in the Midrash that the thousands who sinned with the golden calf were actually from the mixed multitude (Erev Rav) that went up from Egypt with Israel. We can find many pieces of evidence for this from both the verses and common sense.

First of all, the Torah explicitly reports that when they left Egypt, Egyptian non-Jews joined the Israelites: "Many other people went up with them" (Exodus 12:38).

The "mixed multitude" are called by this name because they mixed within the Israelites, meaning they did not stand as a separate congregation, so it was no longer possible to distinguish them from the tribes of Israel.

As mentioned, the practice of worshiping gods through idols was a common custom of the Egyptians, not a custom of the descendants of Abraham the Hebrew. However, here is a very interesting point to note, as it turns out that the practice of representing idols through bovine forms (a golden calf) was also invented by the Egyptians, as we know from archaeology and primarily from Scripture: "Every shepherd is detestable to the Egyptians" (Genesis 46:34), and so Moses said to Pharaoh regarding the Israelites: "If we offer sacrifices that are detestable to the Egyptians in their eyes, will they not stone us?" (Exodus 8:22). From here it is very logical to conclude that the 3000 sinners involved in the calf were largely Egyptians originally, from the mixed multitude, not from the Israelites.

There is an interesting piece of evidence from the verse in which the sinners proclaim regarding the calf (Exodus 32:4): "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt," Rashi emphasizes that the calf worshipers said "your gods... who brought you" and did not say "our gods... who brought us," demonstrating that they were separate from the people. Rashi writes: "Here, it indicates that it was the mixed multitude that went up from Egypt who gathered around Aaron, and they are the ones who made the calf, and then led Israel astray after it."

(Photo: shutterstock)

Another piece of evidence comes from what Hashem said to Moses: "Go down, because your people have become corrupt" (Exodus 32:7), and Rashi learns from this: "It doesn’t say 'the people have become corrupt,' but 'your people,' (those) the mixed multitude that you accepted upon yourself and converted them, without consulting Me, and you said that it would be good for proselytes to join the divine presence. They have become corrupt and corrupted."

The Torah uses the expression "The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, 'If only we had meat to eat!'" (Numbers 11:4), and Malbim interprets: "The rabble — that is, the mixed multitude, began craving for actual craving, because they had tasted no flesh at all."

I have seen it written that even the verse "We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, also the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, onions, and garlic" (Numbers 11:5) is more logically said by Egyptian inhabitants who lived there, not by the Israelite descendants who served there in bondage, in poverty, and certainly not for free.

After all these matters, there might still be someone who asks, how did 3000 individuals from the mixed multitude want to worship Hashem using a golden image, after they too heard at Mount Sinai "You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness" (Exodus 20:3)?

Well, it must be remembered that at the time of the golden calf, the Torah was not yet given to the Israelites (all 613 commandments) and the Tablets of the Law were not yet delivered. Moreover, they believed Moses had perished on Mount Sinai and would not return to lead them, and from this, it could be understood that they wanted to create a new "Torah" for themselves. It is known that sinners tend to philosophize to distort the Torah and lie about its intentions, "for bribery… blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous" (Deuteronomy 16:19). Perhaps the mixed multitude believed Hashem had not yet revealed His image to them, or maybe they thought this commandment was only stated while Moses was alive and was meant to reveal to them from Sinai the way to worship Hashem, and similar such disingenuous excuses.

When there is a very large public, it almost can always be counted on that odd and strange sects will be found among it that will behave contrary to the sound logic of the general public (this is also why today there are sects of Reform and Conservative Jews who light fires on Shabbat although the Torah explicitly forbids this, but they have sophisticated interpretations that the commandments were said to a previous generation, or that God did not actually mean ignition in cars, and so on with interpretations through which everything can be permitted).

Let us not forget that Jeroboam also constructed golden calves for divine service to distance the people from Jerusalem, and he relied on Aaron the priest's act in doing so. As if he explained to the people that even the golden calf is a way to serve the Lord (after all, Aaron the righteous built it!), and no doubt he explained that Israel was only punished because the calf was not intended for every place and every time... In other words, he took the words of the Torah out of context to permit the forbidden with many arguments.

In summary, we learned three important facts about the sin of the golden calf that resolve your question:

- The sin of the golden calf was not meant to worship other gods, but to worship Hashem in a forbidden manner using an idol.

- The sinners of the golden calf numbered only a few thousand, not the entire nation. The nation was punished because they did not protest against them.

- The sinners were from the mixed multitude who had come up from Egypt, from which came their foreign tradition to worship Hashem using a molten image.