Deuteronomy 9:15-21

New International Version

¹⁵ So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.^{(A) 16} When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf.^(B) You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. ¹⁷ So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes.

¹⁸ Then once again I fell^(C) prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water,^(D) because of all the sin you had committed,^(E) doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger. ¹⁹ I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you.^(F) But again the Lord listened to me.^{(G) 20} And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I prayed for Aaron too. ²¹ Also I took that sinful thing of yours, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust^(H) and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain.^(I)