Bible Strands
1 Kings 12:28
After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves and said to the people, “Going up to Jerusalem is too much for you. Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — King Jeroboam addresses the northern tribes after they reject Rehoboam’s rule, acting on his fear that pilgrimages to Jerusalem will cause the people to defect back to Judah.
The words — The Hebrew text foregrounds וַ/יִּוָּעַ֣ץ (va/i.yi.va.'Atz), meaning “he took counsel,” and עֶגְלֵ֣י זָהָ֑ב ('eg.Lei za.Hav), meaning “calves of gold,” which the king declares as the deliverers from Egypt.
The thread — The text directly parallels the Sinai incident recorded in Exodus 32:4 and Exodus 32:8, and establishes the institutionalized idolatry later condemned in 2 Kings 10:29.
Why it lands — The passage requires the reader to see how political calculation can manufacture religious substitutes, using Exodus language to legitimize a break from covenant worship.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
Cross-references
- Exodus 32:4 He took the gold from their hands, and with an engraving tool he fashioned it into a molten calf. And they said, “These, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
- Exodus 32:8 How quickly they have turned aside from the way that I commanded them! They have made for themselves a molten calf and have bowed down to it. They have sacrificed to it and said, ‘These, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”
- 2 Kings 10:29 but he did not turn away from the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat had caused Israel to commit—the worship of the golden calves at Bethel and Dan.
- 2 Kings 17:16 They abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves two cast idols of calves and an Asherah pole. They bowed down to all the host of heaven and served Baal.
- 2 Chronicles 11:15 And Jeroboam appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat demons and calf idols he had made.
- Hosea 8:4 They set up kings, but not by Me. They make princes, but without My approval. With their silver and gold they make themselves idols, to their own destruction.
- Exodus 1:10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase even more; and if a war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”
- Exodus 20:4 You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath.
- Deuteronomy 4:14 At that time the LORD commanded me to teach you the statutes and ordinances you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.
- 1 Kings 12:8 But Rehoboam rejected the advice of the elders; instead, he consulted the young men who had grown up with him and served him.