Why are these statements from Balaam helpful in the shedding of light upon, and in coming to terms with the anger of God demonstrated at Mount Sinai? It may have to do with his speaking of Israel as having the strength of a wild or young bull. It must be of some interest that Balaam uses such language in reference to Israel. Why does he refer to Israel, on two occasions, in connection with a bull? Is it possible that this has something to do with Israel’s self-perception? Did Israel think of itself in such terms? Did it see itself as a bull? Was this well known in that day? Was it well known to a man like Balaam? If so, and as has been previously said, this is a tenuous proposition, it may help us to better understand the righteous indignation to which God rises when Israel fashions the image of the golden calf.
If Israel sees itself as a bull, then the fashioning of a calf, overlaying it with gold, and proclaiming “These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:8b), is a precise recapitulation of the sin of Adam in the garden. In the garden account of Genesis, Adam is created in the image of God. He is brought forth as a bearer of the divine image. He is given a series of responsibilities along with a command he “must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17a). This command was given the ominous appendix of “for when you eat from it you will surely die” (2:17b). Of course, we are quite familiar with the events that transpired in the wake of the command, which was that the fruit of the tree was taken and eaten, upon the false promise of the serpent “that when you eat from it your eyes will be open and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil” (3:5b).
In essence, it was not enough that Adam had been made in the image of God and sent forth into God’s world as the divine-image bearer who was to steward the creation and to reflect the glory of God into the world as a reminder to the creation of its Creator, but Adam actually wanted to be God, and so succumbed to the temptation. The result, of course, was death, just as the faithful, covenant God had promised, telling Adam that he would “return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you will return” (3:19b). This was obviously quite contrary to God’s plan for Adam and for the world, which also received its cursing of death at the same time. The bottom line is that Adam expressed a desire to worship the created being. What followed was chaos, which is well-attested in the historical record from the fourth to eleventh chapters of Genesis, until God set His covenant with Abraham, and began His mission to set His world right.
This is the pattern that we see at Sinai, if, as has been said, it is the case that Israel had self-considerations along the lines of a bull or an ox. If this is so, then their fashioning of the golden calf is to be paralleled with Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit, for it signals that Israel simply had a desire to worship themselves. The words that the Lord reports to Moses are instructive, for when God reports that Israel has said that it is the calf which brought them up from the land of Egypt, then what we are hearing is that they have speedily forgotten the powerful workings of their God, and have begun to credit their deliverance to their own power, or possibly to their own deserving of liberation in light of the years of suffering.
Like Adam, Israel had been brought into existence as a nation for the purpose of being the image-bearers of the God of creation, to reflect the light of His glory into the world, to multiply in the land (think of the directive given to Adam), and to steward the very first part of the creation that God was going to redeem and restore, which was the land that had been promised to the descendants of Abraham. Where Adam had failed, it appeared that Israel was already failing. The making of the golden calf, and the worship that went with it, is congruent to the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as Israel attempted to elevate itself into the realm of God. Just as the punishment for Adam was to be death, so it was going to be the same for Israel, as God moved out to destroy them, and would surely have done so had not Moses intervened, reminding the Lord of His covenant promises that are the basis for His faithful acts. It makes perfect sense for God to want to respond in such a way. When Adam, the first son of God, and the first to receive a covenant, failed and fell, corruption and death and wickedness and destruction and outright rebellion against God’s purposes and plans is what followed. So when Israel, the second son of God, and recipients of covenant, failed and fell, we can imagine that God foresaw the same types of events unfolding, and so planned to take it upon Himself to quickly move against this son, and eradicate the problem.
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