Exodus 32:8–20

8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which mI commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, n‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, o“I have seen this people, and indeed it is a 2stiff-necked people! 10 Now therefore, plet Me alone, that qMy wrath may burn hot against them and I may 3consume them. And rI will make of you a great nation.”

11 sThen Moses pleaded with 4the Lord his God, and said: “Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 tWhy should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and urelent from this harm to Your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You vswore by Your own self, and said to them, w‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14 So the Lord xrelented from the harm which He said He would do to His people.

15 And yMoses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. 16 Now the ztablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.”

18 But he said:

“It is not the noise of the shout of victory,

Nor the noise of the cry of defeat,

But the sound of singing I hear.”

19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that ahe saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 bThen he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.