Deuteronomy 9:8–21

⁸“Even ^aat Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you.

⁹“When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you, then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights; ^aI neither ate bread nor drank water.

¹⁰“The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone ^awritten by the finger of God; and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.

¹¹“It came about ^aat the end of forty days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant.

¹²“^aThen the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have ^bquickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; they have made a molten image for themselves.’

¹³“The ^aLord spoke further to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a ^1bstubborn people.

¹⁴‘^aLet Me alone, that I may destroy them and ^bblot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

¹⁵“^aSo I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

¹⁶“And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf; you had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.

¹⁷“I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes.

¹⁸“^aI fell down before the Lord, ^bas at the first, forty days and nights; ^cI neither ate bread nor drank water, ^dbecause of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to anger.

¹⁹“For ^aI was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, ^bbut the Lord listened to me that time also.

²⁰“The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him; so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time.

²¹“^aI took your ¹sinful thing, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.