The Golden Calf

Deuteronomy 9

13 Furthermore, the LORD spoke unto me, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people. 14 Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they. 15 So I turned and came down from the mount with the two tables of the covenant in my two hands and the mount burned with fire, 16 and I looked, and, behold, ye had sinned against the LORD your God and had made yourselves a molten calf; ye had turned aside quickly out of the way which the LORD had commanded you. 17 Then I took the two tables and cast them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. 18 And I fell down before the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sins in which ye sinned in doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger. 19 For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was wroth against you to destroy you. But the LORD hearkened unto me at that time also. 20 And the LORD was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him, and I prayed for Aaron also the same time. 21 And I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire and stamped it and ground it very small even until it was as small as dust, and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.

22 Also at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibrothhattaavah, ye provoked the LORD to wrath. 23 Likewise when the LORD sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, Go up and inherit the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and ye did not believe him nor hearken to his voice. 24 Ye have been rebels against the LORD from the day that I knew you.

25 Thus I fell down before the LORD forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first, because the LORD had said he would destroy you. 26 I prayed, therefore, unto the LORD and said, O Lord GOD, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast ransomed through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 27 Remember thy slaves, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people nor to their wickedness nor to their sin, 28 lest those of the land from which thou didst bring us out say, Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them or because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. 29 Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou didst bring out by thy mighty power and by thy outstretched arm.

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