The Hebrew Bible says the people told Aaron: "Make us gods that will lead us, for this Moses, we do not know what happened to him" (Exodus 32:1). Targum Onkelos translates this with devastating fidelity. No softening. No excuse-making. The people demanded a replacement for Moses, and Aaron complied.
The Golden Calf episode is one of the few narratives where Onkelos adds almost nothing to the Hebrew. The sin is too stark for interpretive cushioning. Aaron takes the gold rings. He forms a molten calf. The people declare: "These, Israel, are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt" (Exodus 32:4). Onkelos translates it straight. The idolatry is not metaphorical. It is not a misunderstanding. It is exactly what it appears to be.
God's response is fierce: "Leave Me alone, and My wrath will blaze against them and destroy them" (Exodus 32:10). Onkelos renders "leave Me alone" as "leave your prayer from before Me"—God is asking Moses to stop praying. This is an astonishing reading. It means Moses's intercession was already underway before God even finished speaking. The prayer was so powerful that God had to explicitly ask Moses to cease.
Moses does not cease. He argues. He invokes the patriarchs. He warns God that Egypt will say the Exodus was malicious. And God "reconsidered the intent of doing evil to His people" (Exodus 32:14). Onkelos does not flinch at this language. God changed course because a human being argued persuasively. The Tablets—"the work of God, the writing of God" (Exodus 32:16)—are about to be shattered. The highest expression of divine law will be broken by the very prophet who received it, in response to the people's betrayal.