National god in the context of "Golden calf"

In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Traditionally, Judaism holds that God—that is, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites—delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah. Jews believe in a monotheistic conception of God ("God is one"), characterized by both transcendence (independence from, and separation from, the material universe) and immanence (active involvement in the material universe).

God is seen as unique and perfect, free from all faults, and is believed to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and unlimited in all attributes, with no partner or equal, serving as the sole creator of everything in existence. In Judaism, God is never portrayed in any image. The names of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible are the un-pronounced Tetragrammaton (Hebrew: יהוה, romanized: YHWH) and Elohim. Other names used to refer to God in traditional Judaism include Adonai, El-Elyon, El Shaddai, and Shekhinah.

Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, remained the only oracle of Amun throughout. With the 11th Dynasty (c. 21st century BC), Amun rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Montu.

Initially possibly one of eight deities in the Hermapolite creation myth, his worship expanded. After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I (16th century BC), Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra (alternatively spelled Amon-Ra or Amun-Re). On his own, he was also thought to be the king of the gods.

Ma'in (Minaean: 𐩣𐩲𐩬; Arabic: معين, romanized: Maʿīn) was an ancient South Arabian kingdom in modern-day Yemen. It was located along the strip of desert called Ṣayhad by medieval Arab geographers, which is now known as Ramlat al-Sab'atayn. Wadd was the national god of Ma'in. The spoken language was Minaic. The kingdom appears in the historical record in the 8th century BCE, and transition from a city-state to kingdom in the last quarter of the 7th century BCE. The date of the end of Ma'in is heavily disputed, but the most popular hypothesis places its demise in the 1st century CE.

The Minaean people were one of four ancient Yemeni groups mentioned by Eratosthenes. The others were the Sabaeans, Ḥaḑramites and Qatabānians. Each of these had regional kingdoms in ancient Yemen, with the Minaeans in the north-west (in Wādī al-Jawf), the Sabaeans to the south-east of them, the Qatabānians to the south-east of the Sabaeans, and the Ḥaḑramites further east still.

Yahwism, also known as the Israelite religion, was the ancient Semitic religion of ancient Israel and Judah and the ethnic religion of the Israelites. The Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and a polytheistic religion that had a pantheon with various gods and goddesses. The primary deity of the religion and the head of the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The majority of scholars hold that the goddess Asherah was the consort of Yahweh, though some scholars disagree. Following this divine duo were second-tier gods and goddesses, such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, with each having priests and prophets, and numbering royalty among their devotees.

The practices of Yahwism included festivals, ritual sacrifices, vow-making, private rituals, and the religious adjudication of legal disputes. For most of its history, the Temple in Jerusalem was not the sole or central place of worship dedicated to Yahweh, with many locations throughout Israel, Judah, and Samaria. However, it was still significant to the Israelite king, who effectively led the national religion as the worldly viceroy of the national god.

Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity of weather and war in the southeastern ancient Levant, and the national god of the iron age kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Although there is no clear consensus regarding the geographical origins of the deity, scholars generally hold that Yahweh was associated with Seir, Edom, Paran, and Teman, and later with Canaan. The worship of the deity goes back to at least the early Iron Age and apparently to the late Bronze Age.

In the oldest biblical texts, Yahweh possesses attributes that were typically ascribed to deities of weather and war, fructifying the Land of Israel and leading a heavenly army against the enemies of the Israelites. The early Israelites engaged in polytheistic practices that were common across ancient Semitic religion, because the Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and included a variety of deities from it, including El, Asherah, and Baal. Initially a lesser deity among the Canaanite pantheon, Yahweh became conflated with El in later centuries, taking his place as the head of the pantheon in the Israelite religion. El's consort Asherah became associated with Yahweh, and El-linked epithets, such as ʾĒl Šadday (אֵל שַׁדַּי‎), came to be applied to him alone. Characteristics of other deities, such as Asherah and Baal, were also selectively absorbed in conceptions of Yahweh.

Milcom or Milkom (Ammonite: 𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤌 *Mīlkām; Hebrew: מִלְכֹּם Mīlkōm) was the name of either the national god, or a popular god, of the Ammonites. He is attested in the Hebrew Bible and in archaeological finds from the former territory of Ammon. His connections to other deities with similar names attested in the Bible and archaeologically are debated, as well as his relationship to the Canaanite supreme deity El, or the putative deity Moloch.