The Golden Calf

Moses had been on the mountain forty days and forty nights.

The people gathered around Aaron.

They said: Make us gods who will go before us.

As for this Moses who brought us up from Egypt — we do not know what has happened to him.

Aaron told them to bring their gold.

He took it.

He made it into a golden calf with a tool.

They said: These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from Egypt.

Aaron built an altar before it.

He announced a feast to the LORD.

The next day they rose early.

They offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings.

The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.

God told Moses on the mountain: Go down quickly, for your people have corrupted themselves.

They have turned aside quickly from the way I commanded them.

They have made a calf and worshipped it and sacrificed to it and said these are your gods.

Moses came down from the mountain with the two stone tablets in his hands.

Joshua heard the noise in the camp.

He said to Moses: There is a sound of war in the camp.

Moses said: It is not the sound of winning or losing. It is the sound of singing I hear.

He saw the calf and the dancing.

His anger burned hot.

He threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

He took the calf and burned it with fire.

He ground it to powder.

He scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.

He asked Aaron what these people had done to him.

Aaron said the people were set on evil.

He said he had thrown the gold into the fire and out came this calf.

He made a calf come out on its own.

He denied his own hand in it.

Three thousand people died that day.

Moses had been gone forty days.

That was how long it took.

Forty days from Egypt and the Red Sea and the cloud and the fire.

To a golden calf.

Forty days.

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