² Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings^(A) that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” ³ So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took what they handed him and made it into an idol^(B) cast in the shape of a calf,^(C) fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,^[a](D) Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”^(E)

⁵ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival^(F) to the Lord.”

²¹ He said to Aaron, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”

³⁵ And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf^(A) Aaron had made.