Exodus 32:15–29

^15aThen Moses turned and went down from the mountain. And the two tablets of the testimony were in his hand, ^btablets which were written on both ¹sides; they were written on one side and the other.

¹⁶Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

¹⁷Then Joshua heard the sound of the people ¹as they shouted. And he said to Moses, “There is a sound of war in the camp.”

¹⁸But he said,

“It is not the sound of the cry of triumph,

Nor is it the sound of the cry of defeat;

But the sound of singing I hear.”

¹⁹Now it happened, as soon as ¹Moses came near the camp, that ^ahe saw the calf and the dancing; and Moses’ anger burned, and ^bhe threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them ²at the foot of the mountain.

^20aThen he took the calf which they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it over the surface of the water and made the sons of Israel drink it.

²¹Then Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you, that you have brought such great sin upon them?”

²²And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord burn; you know the people yourself, ^athat they are ¹prone to evil.

²³“Indeed ^athey said to me, ‘Make ¹gods for us who will go before us; for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’

²⁴“And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them tear it off.’ So they gave it to me, and ^aI threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.”

²⁵Now Moses saw that the people were ¹out of control—for Aaron had ^alet them ²get out of control to be a derision among ³their enemies—

²⁶so Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Whoever is for Yahweh, come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered together to him.

²⁷And he said to them, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Every man among you put his sword upon his thigh, and go back and forth from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother and every man his friend and every man his ¹neighbor.’”

²⁸So ^athe sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and about three thousand men of the people fell that day.

²⁹Then Moses said, “¹Be ordained today to Yahweh—for every man has been against his son and against his brother—in order that He may bestow a blessing upon you today.”