Tafsir Al-Jalalayn: Al-A'raaf, Ayah 148

And the people of Moses after him that is after he had departed for the communion with God made of their ornaments which they had borrowed from Pharaoh’s folk on the pretext of a wedding celebration and which remained in their possession a calf which the Samaritan had fashioned for them therefrom; a mere living body jasadan is a substitution for ‘ijlan ‘a calf’ of flesh and blood which lowed that is which made audible sounds like a cow it the calf was transformed in this way when the dust which he the Samaritan had collected from where the hoof of Gabriel’s steed had trodden was placed in its mouth for it has the effect of giving life to that in which it is placed the second direct object of the verb ittakhadha ‘they made’ has been omitted but it would be ilāhan ‘as a god’. Did they not see that it spoke not to them nor guided them to any way? so how can it be taken as a god? Yet they took it as such a god and were evildoers for taking it so.