Golden-Calf, was a figure of a calf, which the Israelites cast in that metal, and set up in the wilderness to worship during Moses's absence into the mount; and which that legislator at his return burnt, grinded to powder, and mixed with the water the people were to drink of; as related in Exod. xxxii. The commentators have been divided on this article: the pulverizing of gold, and rendering it potable, is a very difficult operation in chemistry. Many, therefore, suppose it done by a miracle: and the rest, who allow of nothing supernatural in it, advance nothing but conjectures as to the manner of the process. Moses could not have done it by simple calcination, nor amalgamation, nor antimony, nor calcination; nor is there one of those operations that quadrates with the text.

M. Stahl has endeavoured to remove this difficulty. The method Moses made use of, according to this author, was by dissolving the metal with hepatic sulphur; only, instead of the vegetable alkali, he made use of the Egyptian natron, which is common enough throughout the east. See Chemistry, no 1127.