They made a calf in Horeb, and did homage to a molten image;
Psalm 106 is a confession. Israel retells its own history as a record of sin against the God who kept saving them. Verse 19 is where that history turns from complaint into open insult to God. Why does the psalm place the calf here and not in date order? Why name Horeb? And how could people who had just seen God's power bow to something they made themselves?
Israel had just accepted the covenant at that mountain. Very little time passed before the calf.
Grace brought them out of Egypt by God's power. But they murmured and argued all the way, until God gave the law. Accepting the covenant of works put the people on a new footing, where blessing depended on obedience. It gave them a fresh chance to show by obedience the devotion to the God of their salvation that they had professed so quickly and with one voice. But while Moses was on the mountain receiving the tablets of the covenant, the people had already changed their glory into the likeness of an ox that eats grass.
In the story, the calf comes before the rebellions the psalm has just listed.
Verse 19 does not follow the order of dates, but a moral order. Israel made the golden calf in Horeb much earlier, worshipping this man-made image.
So the psalm climbs a scale of guilt.
From dishonouring the servants of God they move on to a still greater sin. They attack the honour of God Himself by setting up a false god. That sin would have brought swift destruction on them, if Moses had not stepped in to plead for them.
The calf met a craving that appeared as soon as Moses was out of sight.
They leaned on the instrument of deliverance instead of the Deliverer. Moses had gone up the mountain for them, to the Lord, whose terrible glory had them trembling only moments before. Yet this went so deep that as soon as Moses was out of sight, they ran in wild haste to Aaron and cried, "Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!" … Such is the way of man. He must have something visible and tangible to look to, if faith in an unseen God is either missing or fading.
An image does not only insult God. It drags the worshipper down.
Here the people learn plainly that in making any image and bowing down to it, they were in fact lowering and corrupting themselves. So when they made the golden calf, the Lord said to Moses, "Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves." It could not be otherwise. The worshipper must be lower than the object of his worship. So in worshipping a calf, they put themselves below the level of the animals that perish.
Aaron gave the event God's own name.
Aaron's proclamation, "Tomorrow is a feast to the Lord," was useless. The calf, and not the Lord, had the homage of their hearts.
So how does God weigh what people do in His name?
God does not measure things by the intention of human agents, but by His own glory… Before God there is no such thing as innocent intention, when a man takes it on himself to lay down the way he thinks God can be honoured, or God's work carried forward. In such cases the means used are just as important as the end intended.
So what counts as an idol for a reader who owns no images at all?
When anything outside the Godhead now known in Christ becomes an object to the heart religiously, it is an idol.
- Place: Israel made the calf at the very mountain where they had just accepted the covenant. Moses was still up there, receiving the tablets.
- Position: The verse stands out of date order on purpose; the psalm is ranked by guilt, moving from envying God's servants to attacking God's honour directly.
- Cause: They leaned on the instrument of deliverance instead of the Deliverer. So when Moses went out of sight, they demanded something visible to follow.
- Cost: A worshipper is always lower than what he worships. Bowing to a calf sank Israel below the animals — they corrupted themselves.
- Cover: Calling it "a feast to the Lord" changed nothing. God measures worship by His own glory, not by our sincerity — and anything outside the Godhead known in Christ that takes the heart is still an idol.
And they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.
Psalm 106 retells Israel's history sin by sin, and at Mount Horeb it names the worst: an exchange. The people traded away the God who set them apart from every other nation, and took in His place a calf that eats grass.
The word "glory" here does not describe something Israel had in itself. It names who their God was:
The people of God cannot meddle with the things of God without corrupting both those things and themselves. They cast aside their proper glory, and become occupied with what debases them. That Jehovah was their God was their glory; but they wanted to make gods for themselves.
This was more than a broken rule. One writer sets the calf against what God had already done to Egypt's gods:
Their image-worship at Horeb assaults God Himself. They drag His glory down to the mere likeness of a beast — an ox that eats grass! They forget all His wonderful deeds in that very Egypt, where He had flattened the false gods they now treated as His equals. Here the intercession of Moses alone saved them from the penalty of that covenant — the covenant they had made with Him in their self-righteousness.
The timing is part of the charge. Moses was still on the mountain, and one writer reads that speed as evidence about human nature itself:
Here is a dreadful and very humbling truth. The nearer fallen human nature comes to God, the more terribly its corruption shows itself. That holds whether God draws it near by religious ordinances or by the direct action of Divine mercy in outward rescues... But Moses was still receiving the tables of the covenant on the mountain. Already the people had changed their glory into the likeness of an ox that eats grass.
The exchange lowered Israel too. One writer explains why an image drags down the people who bow to it:
The people are plainly taught that in making any image and bowing down to it, they lowered and corrupted themselves... The worshipper must be lower than the thing he worships. So in worshipping a calf, they put themselves below the level of the beasts that perish.
So why did they want an image at all? They had leaned on the man they could see, and that man had gone up the mountain:
They had leaned on the instrument of deliverance instead of the Deliverer. That was so true of them that they ran in wild haste to Aaron as soon as Moses was out of sight. Moses had gone up for them into the mountain, to the Lord, whose terrible glory had made them tremble only moments before... Such is the way of man. He must have something he can see and touch, if faith in an unseen God is missing or fading.
Israel was the nation God had singled out for Himself. The calf showed that this privilege had not changed their hearts:
The pagan nations had gone that way and "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things" (Rom. 1:23). The favoured nation shows that their heart is as corrupt as the heart of the Gentiles, who do not know God. They plunged into the degradation of idolatry. They rejected the unseen One, who had honoured Abraham's faith and spoke to their fathers, and preferred a golden calf shaped with a carving tool.
- The glory. Having Jehovah as their God was Israel's glory — the one thing that set them apart, and the one thing they traded away.
- The exchange. They swapped Him for an ox that eats grass. That insulted the God who had just crushed Egypt's own gods in front of them.
- The speed. It happened while the covenant tables were still in Moses' hands. Nearness to God exposes the human heart; it does not improve it.
- The cost. A worshipper always sinks below what he worships. By bowing to a calf, Israel sank below the animals and corrupted itself.
- The rescue. Moses stepped in for them. His intercession alone held back the penalty of the covenant they had accepted in their self-righteousness.