And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.
And now they ... have made them ... idols according to their own understanding - i:e., their arbitrary devising. Compare "will worship" (Colossians 2:23). Men are not to be "wise above that which is written," or to follow their own understanding, but God's command, in worship.
They say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves - an act of adoration to the golden calves (Psalms 106:20, "They changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass;" cf. 1 Kings 19:18; Job 31:27). On the contrary, God commands, "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little" (Psalms 2:12). Jeroboam, a refugee in Egypt (1 Kings 11:40; 1 Kings 12:2), had there seen nature worshipped under the form of a calf. Thus two living bulls, Apis and Mnevis, were worshipped as symbols of Osiris and the sun at Memphis and Heliopolis (Diodorus Siculus, 1: 21; Strabo, 17: 22, 27). As, therefore, Aaron had already, in compliance with the people's wish, made two calves of gold, saying, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 32:4), so Jeroboam, in order to prevent the people's heart turning again to the King of Judah, by their going up to worship in the temple at Jerusalem, set up golden calves, representatives of Yahweh, and like the ox-formed cherubim on the mercy-seat, one in Dan, the other in Bethel, using the very words of Aaron, whose memory the people so revered, "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28).
The temple at Bethel was the king's chapel, the temple of the state (Amos 7:13). God had forbidden men so to worship Him; nor was it He who was so worshipped at Bethel and Dan, though Jeroboam probably meant it. People, when they alter God's truth, alter more than they think for. Such is the lot of all heresy. The calf was the symbol, not of the personal God, but of ever-renewed life-His continued vivifying of all that lives, and renewing of what decays. So what was worshipped was not God, but much what men now call 'Nature.' The calf was a symbol of nature-such as men say, Nature does this or that, nature makes man so and so; as if 'nature' were a sort of semi-deity, or creation were its own creator. 'As men now profess to own God, and do own Him in the abstract, but talk of nature until they forget Him, or because they forget Him, so Jeroboam, a shrewd, practical, irreligious man, stepped into a worship of nature, while he thought, doubtless, he was doing honour, to the Creator, and professing a belief in Him' (Pusey).