11 Their foes returning claim,

And sweep them, one and all, from sight:

12 They saw, they felt, they bless’d his might,

And sang Jehovah’s name.

13 But of his works with impious haste

Forgetful, in the lonely waste

They spurn’d his sage controul;

14 Till, challeng’d by their base distrust,

15 He gave them meat to sate their lust,

With leanness in their soul.

16 ‘Gainst Moses meek their envy burn’d,

And Aaron, saint of God, they spurn’d :

17 Till earth asunder flew,

And Dathan’s factious band devour’d ;

18 And vollied flames, on Korah shower’d,

His godless followers slew.

19 At Horeb’s rock a calf they made,

With gold the sculptur’d form o’erlaid,

And low in worship bow’d:

20 Thus impious they their glory chang’d

To semblance of a beast that rang’d

The grassy field for food;

21 And Him, the living God, forgot,

Their Saviour, who for them had wrought

This amount of text usually scares away the modern reader, but I provide it mainly for a reference, so that you can keep looking up at the section, while reading the post.

In the flow of the story, I want to point out the apostasy that occurs in Israel and then relate it to art.  In the first three verses, upon experiencing want after deliverance from Egypt, Israel forgets the goodness of God and “They spurn’d his sage controul,” says verse 13.  This reminds of 2 Peter 2:1 and following, they deny the Lord that bought them.  God’s will isn’t fitting into their desires, so they spurn God’s wise control of their lives.  Justification would come from their immediate want.

Read it all, but pay attention at this moment at verse 19.  Israel made something.  “At Horeb’s rock a calf they made, With gold the sculptur’d form o’erlaid.”  At Sinai, God gave them the plan for something beautiful, portraying or depicting Himself, but instead they made a golden calf, which was fitting with a god formed in their own imagination.  This is the objective versus the subjective.

The creation of the golden calf by the people of Israel shaped god according to their own lust.  Egypt and other ungodly nations influenced their minds and hearts.  They weren’t neutral.  Their creation was their own expression of their own imagination, not a depiction based upon the revelation of God in His Word.  This is the difference between the objective, the heavenly tabernacle and worship fitting a pattern ordained by God, and the subjective, the inordinate manifestation from within themselves.

Now look at verse 20.  “Thus impious they their glory chang’d To semblance of a beast that rang’d The grassy field for food.”  John Gill writes concerning the first part of this verse:

God, who is glorious in all the perfections of his nature, and is glory itself, and was the glory of these people; it was their greatest honour that they had knowledge of him, nearness to him, the true worship of him among them, and that they were worshippers of him; and who, though he is unchangeable in himself, may be said to be changed when another is substituted and worshipped in his room, or worshipped besides him; which was what the Heathen did, and in which the Israelites exceeded them, (Romans 1:23, Romans 1:25) (Jeremiah 2:11) , the Targum is, “they changed the glory of their Lord.”

Instead of worshiping the Lord in the beauty of His holiness, giving unto the Lord the glory due His name (1 Chron 16:29), “they their glory changed.”  Something that was beautiful was now ugly, no longer reflecting the object of the worship, but the imaginations of their own hearts.

What was “their glory?”  There is some dispute here, but I believe it to be two things.  This relates back to what occurred in Exodus 32:2-3 and 33:5-6, when the people who made and worshiped a calf at Horeb changed their glory into a calf.  Their glory was actually the glory of the Lord — that was the true glory of Israel, but in their minds and hearts.  God had been replaced.  The reference to “their glory” refers to the golden earrings that were molded into the calf.  Their glory should have been the Lord, but it wasn’t and it had become their golden earrings and the like.

In verse 21, “And Him, the living God, forgot.”  They could not depict what or who they had forgotten.  As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:23, they “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”

Some might answer, “But the golden calf wasn’t art.”  It wasn’t art in the sense that art is objectively beautiful, and the calf was only in the eyes of the beholders.  It was an expression of their own imagination, God based on the perspective of the subject, hence subjective.  Paul calls their minds, “reprobate” (Rom 1:28), the Greek word adokimos, which is literally “fails to meet the test.”  As a result, their portrayal of God, the “art,” is distorted because it proceeds from their own depravity.

Very common then when God doesn’t accept the “art,” or as it occurs mostly that godly people reject it, the subjects oppose the leadership (verse 26) — “‘Gainst Moses meek their envy burn’d, And Aaron, saint of God, they spurn’d.”  They can’t get at God Himself, but they can tear into the human leaders, representing God.  It didn’t turn out well for Dathan and Korah (verses 17 and 18).

The godly focuses on God, His own beauty, and the beauty of what He created, not the distortions.  The truth shapes the imagination.   He retains a true view of God and his behavior is also affected in a godly way.  On the other hand, someone forms his own imagery of God in his mind and expresses that with what he makes.  It not only changes His own view of God but it has a diminishing and destructive affect on others.