Exodus 32:6. They rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings; and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
“This expression [play—Heb. tsachek, to laugh; and so rendered in Genesis 21:6] often signifies dancing among the ancients. It probably refers here to some mystic dance which imitated the course of the stars. The sun-god was represented by the ancients by the image of a bull. Its worship was well known to the Israelites because the Egyptians paid honor to the bull Apia in Memphis; and earlier than this to the bull Mnevis in On, by which name the Greek Heliopolis (City of the Sun) was called. On was near the land of Goshen, which was given to the Israelites when they were brought from Canaan to Egypt” (Stollberg's History of Religion, vol. 2, p. 127; cit. by Rosenmuller, Morgenland, vol. 2, p. 134).
The Egyptian idolaters worshiped deity under animal forms, thus differing from many other nations of antiquity whose deities were in human form. They kept live animals in some of their temples, and exhibited representations of them in others. The worship was accompanied with lascivious dances and other obscene practices. This is probably referred to in the twenty-fifth verse.
Reference is made to the Egyptian origin of this calf-worship in Ezekiel 20:6-8, and in Acts 7:39, 40. Jeroboam, who afterward set up the two golden calves (1 Kings 12:28) had lived in Egypt (1 Kings 12:2).