1 Kings 12:28

Calves of gold. — The choice of this symbol of the Divine Nature — turning, as the Psalmist says with indignant scorn, “the glory of God into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay” (Psalms 106:20) — was probably due to a combination of causes. First, the very repetition of Aaron’s words (Exodus 32:8) indicates that it was a revival of that ancient idolatry in the wilderness. Probably, like it, it was suggested by the animal worship of Egypt, with which Jeroboam had been recently familiar, and which (as is well known) varied from mere symbolism to gross creature worship. Next, the bull, as the emblem of Ephraim, would naturally become a religious cognisance of the new kingdom. Lastly, there is some reason to believe that the figure of the cherubim was that of winged bulls, and the form of the ox was undoubtedly used in the Temple, as for example, under the brazen sea. It has been thought that the “calves” were reproductions of the sacred cherubim, — made, however, symbols, not of the natural powers obeying the Divine word, but of the Deity itself.

It is, of course, to be understood that this idolatry, against which the prohibition of many sanctuaries was meant to guard, was a breach, not of the First Commandment, but of the Second — that making of “a similitude” of the true God, so emphatically forbidden again and again in the Law. (See, for example, Deuteronomy 4:15.) Like all such veneration of images, it probably degenerated. From looking on the image as a mere symbol it would come to attach to it a local presence of the Deity and an intrinsic sacredness; and so would lead on, perhaps to a veiled polytheism, certainly to a superstitious and carnal conception of the Godhead.