The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
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." One calf he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan.
Earlier text
Exodus 32:4BSB
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 32:4 records the people declaring before Aaron's golden calf: "These, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt" (אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל, elleh elohekha yisra'el). 1 Kings 12:28-29 records Jeroboam using virtually identical words when installing his golden calves at Bethel and Dan: "Here, O Israel, are your gods, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." The verbatim quotation is the narrator's deliberate indictment—Jeroboam's sin is not merely generic idolatry but a conscious repetition of the wilderness apostasy. The Deuteronomistic historian frames the northern kingdom's founding act of worship as a recapitulation of Israel's primal sin, establishing the paradigm of covenant unfaithfulness that will define the northern monarchy.