A MOLTEN or CAST image — from a root meaning to pour out metal, and the two-word phrase egel massekhah, 'molten calf,' becomes the Torah's own standing name for illegitimate worship (32:4, 8). Later writers reach for the identical phrase whenever they look back on this exact day: Israel's national confession names it directly — 'a molten calf, and said, This is your God' (Nehemiah 9:18) — and a psalm retells the same scene in poetry, 'they made a calf in Horeb... they exchanged their glory for the likeness of an ox' (Psalm 106:19-20). The bare noun returns almost immediately, in the covenant renewed to replace what the calf destroyed — 'you shall make yourself no molten gods' (Exodus 34:17, already on these pages) — and becomes shorthand for any cast idol at all a few books later, forbidden in the same words: 'you shall make yourselves no molten gods' (Leviticus 19:4). → first discussed at Exod 32:4