Cesc

Exodus 32 (NIV)

5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD." 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

The verb is צחק, apparantly meaning to laugh, mock, sport, play, to make sport.
As far as I can see, it is used almost exclusively in the sense to laugh or mock. But also used once when Isaac is "laughing with" Rebekah (Gen 26:8) so that king Abimelech realises that she is Isaac's wife and not his sister. Merely a pun on "Isaac" (יצחק)?

Some commentaries assure that the Israelites go out of control horny, others that they merely celebrate, play or dance.

Other translations:

New Living Translation
After this, they celebrated with feasting and drinking, and they indulged in pagan revelry.

English Standard Version
And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

GOD'S WORD Translation (1995)
Afterward, they sat down to a feast, which turned into an orgy.

Bible in Basic English
and took their seats at the feast, and then gave themselves to pleasure.

Darby Bible Translation
and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to sport.

When Moses, in verse 25, descends from the mountain he finds them "getting naked" or "out of control".

So... were they playing cricket or getting it on orgy style?

braces_for_impact

I hear they had nothing on those in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Doug Shaver

Whatever suits your imagination, I guess, considering it's all fiction anyway.

rhutchin

Apparently, they were partying. Perhaps celebrating their freedom from slavery under the Egyptians.

Johnny Skeptic

Obviously not since there is not any credible evidence that the Exodus and the Ten Plagues occurred in Egypt.

darstec

Darn. You beat me to it.

Cesc

But is this a story about them making a golden calf and then worshipping it with dancing and singing, as children around the world are being taught - or is the author actually telling us that the one million Israelites were having frenzied sex with each other? Is there a justification for translating it as "orgy"?


Yes, well that is a very easy way to do biblical criticism, then... And I'd have to go with cricket.

semiopen

Standard Jewish Exegesis is that it was just the men.

This is supported by:

The key word here is armlets which is actually a mistranslation of kumaz which is usually considered to mean body ornaments.

http://bible.ort.org/books/pentd2.as...r&pentid=P2563

(interesting site)

Rav Joseph said the letters KMZ is an anagram for k'am makom zimah or this is the place of obscenity.

Rashi discusses this is in most Jewish Chumashes, but they don't usually translate it into English, the hebrew is in a separate section.

Anyway the women are said not to have taken part in the Golden Calf incident, if only because they were wearing chastity devices.

darstec

Technically it was not a calf. It was a bull. The bull was one of the representations (an eye being the other) of the Hebrew god of war and thunder, namely Yahweh. What we have left is 800 years after the supposed events the returning princes and high priests garbled the stories.

They wrote out the polytheism of the ancient Hebrews and forced their newly learned (from the Babylonians, Zoroastrians and Persians) monotheism on the residents. Most of the history they simply fabricated. The rest they got wrong.

Look how they screwed up the story of Abraham pretending his wife was his sister. Another story where they remembered an item or two but forgot the whole underlying culture.

Are you saying the bible is history?

Cesc

Interesting. But what about the "feast"? Was it an all-male orgy, then?? Do you know what Rashi said about that?



How do you know the golden bull and an eye were representations of the early war/thundergod Yahweh?
How did they screw up the story of Abraham?

No, I'm saying that just because the text is fiction it doesn't mean that you can decide from imagination what it says.