Why, Augustine asks, did Moses make Israel drink the ground-up gold of the calf? It’s an allegory of incorporation of the Gentiles. The golden calf is Gentile idolatry, but it is broken and humbled, ground down to dust, and then sprinkled on the water for Israel to drink – Israel here meaning, Augustine says, “the preachers of the gospels.”
Thus, “through baptism, these former pagans are admitted into these Israelites’ bodies, that is, into the body of Christ, which is the church . . . . So this calf, by the fire of zeal, the keen penetration of the word, and the water of baptism, rather than swallowing the people, was instead by them swallowed.”
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