Molding
“Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.” Exodus 34:17 turns a craft into a command. Casting metal was real, useful work in Scripture: Job marvels that “brass is molten out of the stone,” and in 1 Kings 7 the king cast temple vessels in clay ground by the Jordan. The warning is about what is made. Aaron’s calf in Exodus 32 was “a molten calf,” and the people worshipped it, a failure Leviticus 19:4 forbids again. Exodus 32 shows the scene in full.
7 verses
Exodus
And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
Leviticus
Turn ye not unto idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am the LORD your God.
1 Kings
In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan.