The Golden Calf – Which Kind of Idolatry?

As I was doing my latest article at The Voice of One Crying Out in the Wilderness (The Second Commandment - Is it Different from the First?), it occurred to me that the account of the Israelites making a golden calf in Exodus 32 is a violation of the 2^nd commandment rather than the 1^st (see the introduction to that article for an explanation of the difference). Let’s carefully review exactly what happened in that story (you may want to read it yourself first in Exodus 32).