Deuteronomy 9:8–21

⁸“And remember at Horeb you provoked Yahweh, and Yahweh became angry enough to destroy you. ⁹When I went up the mountain^q to receive the stone tablets,^r the tablets of the covenant that Yahweh made^s with you, and remained on the mountain forty days^t and forty nights,^u I did not eat food and I did not drink water. ¹⁰And Yahweh gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them was writing according to all the words that Yahweh spoke with you at the mountain, from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. ¹¹And then^v at the end of forty days^w and forty nights,^x Yahweh gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. ¹²And Yahweh said to me, ‘Come now, go down quickly from this mountain because your people behave corruptly whom you brought out from Egypt, for they turned quickly from the way that I commanded them to follow; they have made for themselves a cast image.’ ¹³And Yahweh spoke to me, saying,^y ‘I have seen this people, and look! They are a stubborn people.^{z 14}Leave me alone, and let me destroy them, and let me blot out their name from under heaven, and let me make you into a nation mightier and more numerous than they!’

¹⁵“And I turned, and I went down the mountain, as the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶And I looked,^a and indeed you had sinned against Yahweh your God; you had made for yourselves an image of a calf of cast metal; ^b you had turned quickly from the way that Yahweh had commanded for you. ¹⁷And I took hold of the two tablets, and I threw them out of^c my two hands and smashed them before your eyes. ¹⁸And then I lay prostrate before^d Yahweh, as earlier, forty days^e and forty nights;^f I did not eat food and I did not drink water because of all your sins that you committed, by doing evil in the eyes of Yahweh and so provoking him. ¹⁹For I was in dread^g from being in the presence of the anger and the wrath with which Yahweh was angry with you so as to destroy you, but Yahweh listened to me also at that time.^{h 20}And with Aaron Yahweh was angry enoughⁱ to destroy him, and I prayed also for Aaron at that time. ²¹And your sinful thing that you had made, the molten calf, I took and I burned it with fire, and I crushed it, grinding it thoroughly until it was crushed to dust, and I threw its dust into the stream that flowed down the mountain.^j