出32:2Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me."

出32:3So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

出32:4He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."

出32:5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord ."

出32:6So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

出32:7Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt.

出32:8They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.'

出32:9I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, "and they are a stiff-necked people.

出32:10Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation."

出32:11But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. "O Lord ," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?

出32:12Why should the Egyptians say, 'It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.

出32:13Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.' "

出32:14Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

出32:15Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides, front and back.

出32:16The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

出32:17When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, "There is the sound of war in the camp."

出32:18Moses replied: "It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear."

出32:19When Moses approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, his anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.

出32:20And he took the calf they had made and burned it in the fire; then he ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the Israelites drink it.

出32:21He said to Aaron, "What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?"