And the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold. And he said to them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem behold thy gods, Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!
Jeroboam is Israel's new king, and his first act is to give the people a new place and a new object of worship. The two golden calves raise a question that runs through the rest of Israel's history: what happens when a man designs worship instead of receiving it from God?
The decision starts with a calculation. One writer traces it back to its root:
Events unfold without him having to interfere, but he does not trust God. He says in his heart, "Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David." Having no confidence in God, he weighs the probabilities and stops there. Faith never stops at probabilities. I would even say that it feeds on impossibilities and is the better for it... He has made his decision: Israel must have a new religion.
The design of Israel's worship now came from the king himself, and the name it earned him stayed on him:
Now, the moral fall of the new king — of Jeroboam — was not long delayed. Judging by human wisdom and forgetting the fear of the LORD, he made two golden calves. He wanted to break the strong links of a shared worship, so that his subjects would no longer be tied to Judah and Jerusalem. He had to set up a new priesthood. Everything to do with worship he made up out of his own heart. Israel's sin became a fixed rule, and the phrase "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin" became the sad title of their first king.
Notice how he sells it. The pitch is convenience:
He presented it as bringing religion to their doors, as helping his people to a religion that would not cost too much or be too hard — in fact, he was only trying to make religion serve his policy.
The verse opens with the king taking counsel. One writer points out who he consulted, and how his words went past what Israel and Aaron said at Sinai:
To abandon the worship of the true God is to fall into idolatry, whatever form it takes. In religion there is no middle ground. No doubt Jeroboam thought he had found such a middle ground: he did not adopt the false gods of the nations around him; he only wanted to set up a common religion for Israel. Having no heart-knowledge of the God who had spoken to him, he took counsel with himself and made two golden calves... He brings back into honour that Jewish idolatry which the people had practised at the foot of Sinai, and which had brought God's judgment down on them. Only he goes further than Israel went in the wilderness. His abandoning of God is more complete. "Behold your gods," he says, while the people had said, "This is your god" (Ex. 32:4-5, J. N. Darby translation). He does not add, as Aaron had done, "Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD!" The LORD is completely set aside.
(Note: this contrast comes from an older translation. The ESV reads "These are your gods" in Exodus 32:4.)
The sharpest part comes at the end. Jeroboam credits the calves with the rescue from Egypt.
He "made two calves of gold, and said … Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." In short, this was a complete denial of the sovereign mercy of God, who had delivered His people by the power of His own hand. The antidote to self-importance is a deep sense of sovereign mercy kept in our souls.
The calves were only the start. What he built next was a careful copy, placed at the two ends of his land:
Jeroboam is a cunning politician. He sets up one calf at Bethel, on the boundary with Judah, and the other at Dan, the northern frontier of his territory. He patterns his worship after the form of the worship prescribed by the law of Moses. "A house of high places" replaces the temple. In place of the Levitical priesthood come "priests from all classes of the people, who were not of the sons of Levi."... All this "he had devised of his own heart"!
One writer draws a short, direct warning:
Beware of changing, even of modifying, the instructions God has given us in His Word!
- Fear starts it. Jeroboam weighs the odds instead of trusting God. Unbelief invents the calves.
- Convenience sells it. He offers religion nearer home, cheaper and easier — worship reshaped to serve his policy.
- Imitation hides it. He copies temple and priesthood, so the new system looks like the real one — yet he devised it all out of his own heart.
- Robbery completes it. Crediting the calves with the rescue from Egypt denies the mercy of the God whose own hand delivered them.
- A name records it. This one act names him ever after: the man "who made Israel to sin." Design your own worship, and you lead others into it.
And he set the one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.
Two verses earlier Jeroboam made two golden calves. Here he chooses their two homes: one in the south of his new kingdom, one in the far north.
Jeroboam's first move came out of fear. He reasoned like a politician about how to keep his people from going to Jerusalem.
However, Jeroboam was worried. If the Israelites went to Jerusalem, God's centre, to offer sacrifices, they might want to return and accept the rule of Rehoboam. Jeroboam had no real faith in the living God. So he took the advice of his officials and followed human expediency. He set up not one centre for Israel's worship but two, and both of them stood in opposition to God's one centre. To carry out this plan he had two golden calves made, one set in Bethel (in the south of the land) and the other in Dan (in the north).
Jeroboam sold the two sites to his people as a kindness. Worship would now be near, cheap and easy.
He presented it as bringing religion to their doors. He was helping his people to a religion that would not be too costly or too difficult. In fact he was only seeking to make religion serve his policy. He did this knowing well that a kingdom cannot be strong on the earth where God is not acknowledged. That is even more true of Israel, God's people. The government must acknowledge God too, so that the kingdom does not have two contrary authorities. For in fact the stronger of the two for the conscience is religion, not civil obedience.
Bethel was not a random town. Its name and its history made a calf there a direct insult.
Instead of asking God, we read that Jeroboam "took counsel," evidently from men. The result was the setting up of the two golden calves. One stood at Dan, in the far north. The other stood at Bethel, as a challenge to the God of Jacob. It is striking that he repeated the sin of Aaron and the people of Israel at the foot of Sinai… Jeroboam even repeated the words of Aaron: "Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." … Some argue that Jeroboam was really worshipping the Lord, only with the help of visible images. People urge this today to excuse blatant idolatry. The Bible does not support it. It says plainly: "This thing became a sin."
Later God spoke of the town under a different name.
Bethel means "House of God." It was sacred as the spot where God showed Himself to Jacob and graciously pledged Himself to His servant (Genesis 28:10-22). Now one of Jeroboam's calves stood there, and the Lord spoke of the place with contempt as Bethaven — "house of folly" (Hosea 4:15).
Dan already had a history of idols. Generations earlier a grandson of Moses set up idol worship there, and his line of priests kept it alive.
Jonathan turned away from the God of his grandfather, the leader and lawgiver of Israel, and encouraged the worship of idols… He started and established that line of idolatrous priesthood. It continued in the tribe of Dan through many centuries, "until the day of the captivity of the land" (Judges 18:30)… The first sign of this harmful influence in Israel's history is the setting up of Micah's carved image in the city of Dan (Judges 18:29-31).
A later king, Jehu, had his own reason to keep the calves standing.
Jehu cared for himself and not for God. The golden calves were a political religion, and it suited the policy of the ten tribes to keep them up. If the ten tribes had had no calves of gold, they would have returned to their allegiance to the Lord in Jerusalem. The calves were the great means of having another centre. Suppose Jerusalem had stayed the one centre for all twelve tribes. Then they would have united in the worship of God, and under the same king.
Commentators read the two sites as a warning about choosing our own ground for worship.
God had said, you shall worship in the place that I shall choose. Dan and Bethel were Jeroboam's choice. Today many seek to serve God and "worship" Him in the way and the place that suits them. But the New Testament teaches us that the place must be of God's choosing. It must be the place where Christ is in the midst, and where the Holy Spirit is free to lead in true worship.
- Fear — the calves started in a heart with no real faith in God. Jeroboam solved his problem on a human level instead.
- Convenience — Jeroboam sold both sites as religion made near, cheap and easy. In truth they served his own policy.
- Substitution — Bethel, the house of God, became the house of folly. Claiming to picture the true God with an image is still idolatry.
- Inheritance — Dan had housed idols since Judges 18. The north was ready ground for what Jeroboam set there.
- Permanence — a religion kept because it is useful outlives the man who invented it. The place of worship must be God's choice, not ours.