Deuteronomy 9:11-19

English Standard Version

¹¹And at the end of forty days and forty nights the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. ¹²Then the Lord said to me, ^(A)‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have ^(B)turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them; they have made themselves a metal image.’

The Golden Calf

¹³^(C)“Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is ^(D)a stubborn people. ¹⁴^(E)Let me alone, that I may destroy them and ^(F)blot out their name from under heaven. And ^(G)I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’ ¹⁵^(H)So I turned and came down from the mountain, and ^(I)the mountain was burning with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶And ^(J)I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made yourselves a golden^[a] calf. ^(K)You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. ¹⁷So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. ¹⁸Then I ^(L)lay prostrate before the Lord ^(M)as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, ^(N)in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. ¹⁹For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. ^(O)But the Lord listened to me that time also.