It is not that they believed their statue was God. They knew no statue had brought them out of Egypt and into the desert. No statue had fed them or brought them water from the rock. They knew God, but they could not see him; and because they needed to see they wanted a representation, something that might remind them of his strength. That they used their most precious material and fashioned it into something that was a symbol of power made it easier for them. It was not God. It could not be since they had made it. They had no illusions about what they had made, and maybe even thought it would be all right to have -- but it was not what God wanted. No matter that it was only a symbol. Any attempt to contain him, to limit him to limited images, would get in the way. He wanted it understood that no image, no statue, no representation of any sort could suffice.
The signs, even in gold, did not serve as even the bleakest suggestion of his being. Nor was there ever anything to mirror in even the most remote manner the power of God. I wonder do we risk the same error, thinking that what we do or make might be our attempts to contain God, losing his grandeur in our symbols or our words, thoughts and so very inadequate ideas. Like the genie trapped in a bottle, God contained in our theology would make sense only in a story. A realer God is really beyond all that, so far beyond that our attempts to think of him are to spend our time poorly.
God is, and he is beyond whatever might emerge from however much time or energy we could give to efforts as pointless as the fashioning of a golden bull. Like the people in the desert, we may only do it for ourselves but it is hardly a sufficient reason.
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