Exodus 32:15–29

¹⁵And ^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. ¹⁶Now the ^ztablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets.

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

¹⁸But 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.”

¹⁹So 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. ^20bThen 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. ²¹And Moses said to Aaron, ^c“What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?”

²²So Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my lord become hot. ^dYou know the people, that they are set on evil. ²³For they said to me, ‘Make us gods that shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ ²⁴And I said to them, ‘Whoever has any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.”

²⁵Now when Moses saw that the people were ^eunrestrained (for Aaron ^fhad not restrained them, to their shame among their enemies), ²⁶then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side—come to me!” And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him. ²⁷And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let every man put his sword on his side, and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp, and ^glet every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor.’ ” ²⁸So the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day. ^29hThen Moses said, ⁵“Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, that He may bestow on you a blessing this day, for every man has opposed his son and his brother.”