Commentaria in Exodum
FROM THE EARS OF YOUR WIVES, AND YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS.—This deed, namely an idol, Aaron durst not altogether refuse, lest he be slain by the tumultuous people, but by this demand he tried to turn them aside, asking for the golden earrings of wives and daughters, which he thought women, most avaricious and most eager for ornament, would very unwillingly pull off and give to the idol; but their wickedness and perverse liberality overcame all this, though in other things they were most avaricious. So Theodoret, Abulensis, Cajetan, Lipomanus. We see like ways of Christians now and then, who pour out all their means on the pleasures of the flesh, pomp and luxury, but scarcely bestow a farthing on Christ; and therefore often what Christ does not receive, the exchequer seizes.
4. HE FASHIONED THEM BY FOUNDER’S WORK.—Aaron the modeller, therefore, first composed the form of the calf from earth, clay or like material, and in it with a graving tool (as the Hebrew has) fashioned the eyes, ears, mouth and the other limbs of the calf; in the form of the Egyptian Apis or calf; he made, first, a mould, not the calf itself, and then poured into this form the melted gold of the earrings, and so the golden calf was cast from it.
AND MADE OF THEM A MOLTEN CALF.—Hence is plain the vanity of the fable of the Rabbis, by which they try to free their Aaron from the crime of idolatry, saying that this calf was not made by art by Aaron, but by the work of the Egyptian magicians, many of whom, in so great a mixed multitude, had followed the Hebrews going out of Egypt; that Aaron, forced by the people, only cast the gold into the fire (for so Aaron excuses himself before Moses, verse 24); but that the magicians by the help of a demon fashioned it into the form of a calf. This opinion pleased in part Moncaeus, who lately contended ingeniously to excuse Aaron from idolatry in his Aaron Purged; but this book of his (as I had forewarned) was censured at Rome, and put in the class of prohibited books.
For this opinion plainly contradicts Scripture here, which asserts that Aaron made the calf, that is, caused it to be made by a goldsmith. For thus it says: “And when he (Aaron) had received them, he fashioned them by founder’s work, and made of them a molten calf.” Again, verse 5: “And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it (the calf), and made proclamation by the voice of a crier, saying: Tomorrow is the solemnity of the Lord (of the calf).” Aaron therefore not only made the idol, namely the calf, but also built an altar to it, dedicated it, and proclaimed a feast. What is clearer? Finally, Moses, Deut. 9:20, confesses his brother’s crime, saying: “And I prayed likewise for Aaron, because he would have destroyed him.” Aaron therefore yielded to fear and to the raging people, nor durst he struggle against them for fear of death. More truly and soberly R. Moses of Gerona, in Lipomanus, accuses not the Egyptians, but Aaron and his Hebrews, saying: “No vengeance, O Israel, has befallen thee in which there is not an ounce of the iniquity of the calf.”
A CALF.—This calf was the Egyptian ox Apis, called by another name Serapis: so Clement, who describes it thus: Apis, they say, was of black body, with a white forehead, and marked on the back with a white spot, and it was not lawful for him to exceed a certain number of years of life; and therefore when dead he was sunk in a lake: they mourned for him, and when another was found they rejoiced exceedingly. See Alexander ab Alexandro, book 6 of the Genial Days, chap. 3.
Moreover that the Hebrews here melted not a whole calf, but only the head of a calf, St. Cyprian expressly relates, in his book On the Good of Patience, near the end, where he calls it an ox’s head; Ambrose, epist. 62; Lactantius, book 4, chap. 10; Augustine, Psalm 72; Jerome on Amos 5, and often elsewhere; and hence some think the Hebrew word seraphim was formed, as if it meant the face of an ox; for shor in Hebrew signifies an ox, appaim or appim a face. Wherefore also the calves which Jeroboam made and set up in Dan and Bethel, against which all the Prophets thunder so, since they were made in imitation of this Aaronic calf, as is plain from 3 Kings 12:28, were probably only the heads of calves, and therefore are named now calves, now heifers: for from a head the sex can hardly be discerned.
Yet, if this head of a calf gave any indication of sex, it probably gave that of a bull-calf rather than a heifer; for Herodotus, book 2, teaches that cows especially were sacred to Isis among the Egyptians: whence Josephus, book 8, chap. 3, says that Jeroboam’s calves were heifers; the Septuagint also call them heifers, 3 Kings 12:28 and following: this calf, therefore, is taken to be not male but female, if it betrayed a sex, as I said. For so ox is said both of the female and the male. So Ribera on Osee 10, num. 12. Elsewhere Josephus is silent on this calf; plainly he would not, among the heathen to whom he wished to commend his nation, brand it with so foolish a crime of idolatry.
MOLTEN.—Here again reject the trifles of R. Solomon, who feigns that this calf was alive, walked and ate; and that when Aaron saw this he built an altar to it. He proves this from Psalm 105, where it is said: “They changed their glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass.” But the foolish man did not observe that it is not said, “into a calf,” but “into the likeness,” that is, the idol, “of a calf that eateth grass.” For this idol of a calf was molten of gold, as is here said: it was therefore golden and lifeless, not living and animate. So Lyranus and Abulensis, who refutes him at length and with much labour.
THESE ARE THY GODS, O ISRAEL.—The Chaldee: These are thy fear, O Israel, as if to say: These are thy gods, whom thou oughtest to fear and worship. So the foolish fear gold and stones, and fear not God, who holds their breath and soul in his hand, to hurl it down to hell, or lift it up to heaven.
5. AND WHEN AARON SAW THIS,—not a calf walking, as R. Solomon explains, but the crowd thus rejoicing and acclaiming the calf: “These are thy gods, O Israel.”
HE BUILT AN ALTAR BEFORE IT,—the idol of the calf. Aaron’s fall here was strange, that to win the favour of the people, and perhaps because in Moses’ absence he aspired to the headship and leadership of the people, not now through fear but of his own will, he should build an altar to the calf, and decree its dedication and feast; nay more, should attribute and impose on the calf the name Tetragrammaton (for so it is in the Hebrew), which is incommunicable and proper to the one true God. Who will trust himself and his own sanctity? Who does not work out his salvation with fear and trembling, when he sees Aaron, Origen, Tertullian, and like cedars of Libanus falling, and falling so foully and so deeply?
Heretics object: Therefore the whole Church with its head can fail and apostatize from God; for so Aaron the pontiff failed here, and the whole people.
I answer that Aaron was not yet created pontiff: Moses, therefore, was the head of the people and pontiff, and he did not fail; the Levites also did not fail, as is plain from verse 26. Therefore neither the head nor the body of the Church failed. Add that Aaron did not fail in faith, but in the profession of faith: as Peter, denying Christ, did not lose his faith, but sinned against the confession of it.
6. THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT,—of the peace victims immolated to the calf, that so they might celebrate its feast and solemnity by a common and sacred banquet.
AND THEY ROSE UP TO PLAY,—leaping, singing, dancing; for these Moses saw as he came down from the mount, verse 19. See here how foolish and impure a daughter of gluttony is mirth, as St. Gregory teaches, book 1 of the Morals, chap. 5. The same abuse of sacrifices among the Gentiles Epicharmus deplores in Athenaeus, book 2: “From sacrifice,” he says, “came a feast, from the feast a drinking, from the drinking a revel, from the revel play, from play a lawsuit, from the lawsuit condemnation, from condemnation fetters, gangrene and a fine.” Hence they called drinking-bouts by a name derived from the Greek for after the sacrifices, because after sacrifices they gave themselves up to revelry and drunkenness.
St. Ambrose, epist. 36 to Sabinus: “When a man begins,” he says, “to live luxuriously, he begins to stray from the true faith. So he commits two very great crimes, the reproaches of the flesh and the sacrileges of the mind, etc.; he who has gorged and immersed himself in pleasures of this sort runs into the snares of faithlessness. For the people sat down to eat and drink, and demanded gods for themselves.”
Moreover some gather that this play was impure from the fact that they seem to have played in honour of the calf (which is a most wanton and lustful animal). For the calf, and with the calf, they frisked like calves. So Tertullian, book On Fasting, which he wrote against the Psychics (that is, the animal-minded: so rigid and severe was he that he called Christians and Catholics so, as living more laxly), being already a heretic and a Montanist; for thus he says: “They rose up to play; I understand,” he says, “the modesty of Holy Scripture, that play denotes nothing but what is unchaste” (whence also the Rabbis grossly explain to play as to fornicate). For so the Roman and Greek Gentiles in honour of their gods held games, and said and did whatever they pleased, and the most obscene things of all. They gave also spectacles, which, as dedicated to idols, are unlawful for Christians to attend, no less than meats offered to idols, as Tertullian teaches in his book On the Spectacles, which he wrote for this reason.