In order to get rid of this difficulty, several learned commentators have interpreted the word _hhereth_ (graving-tool) as meaning like _hharith_, a bag, pocket, or purse, causing the passage to read, "He received them at their hands, and put it (the gold) into a bag, and made it a golden calf." Dr. Beke thinks this untenable on the ground that as Aaron must necessarily have collected the golden earrings together before casting them into the fire, it is hardly likely that express mention would be made of so trivial a circumstance as that of his putting them into a bag merely for the purpose of immediately taking them out again. The root _hharath_, according to Gesenius, has the meaning of to cut in, to engrave; and one of the significations of the kindred root _pharatz_ is to cut to a point, to make pointed. "Hharithim, the plural of hhereth, is said to mean purses, bags for money, so called from their long and round shape, perhaps like an inverted cone; whence it is that Bochart and others acquired their notion that Aaron put the golden earrings of the Israelites into a bag."[15] Dr. Beke remarks:--"If the word _hhereth_ signifies a bag, on account of its resemblance to an inverted cone, it may equally signify any other similarly-shaped receptacle or vessel, such as a conical fire-pot or crucible; and if the golden earrings were melted in such a vessel, the molten metal, when cool, would of course have acquired therefrom its long and round form, like an inverted cone, which is precisely the shape of the _egel_ made by Aaron, on the assumption that this was intended to represent the flame of fire. Consequently, we may now read the passage in question literally, and without the slightest violence of construction, as follows: 'And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hands, and placed it (the gold) in a crucible, and made it a molten cone;' this cone having taken the long and rounded form of the crucible in which it was melted and left to cool." An argument in favour of this reading is certainly supplied by Exodus xxxii. 24, where Aaron is represented as saying to Moses, when trying to excuse his action, "I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf" [or cone?]. It is contended that "the whole tenour of the narrative goes to show that the operation of making the idol for the children of Israel to worship must have been a most simple, and, at the same time, a very expeditious one, such as the melting of the gold in a crucible would be, but which the moulding and casting of the figure of a calf, however roughly modelled and executed, could not possibly have been."