Deuteronomy 9:13-21

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

¹³ Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen that this people is indeed a stubborn people.^{(A) 14} Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation mightier and more numerous than they.’^(B)

¹⁵ “So I turned and went down from the mountain, while the mountain was ablaze; the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.^{(C) 16} Then I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God, by casting for yourselves an image;^[a] you had been quick to turn from the way that the Lord had commanded you.^{(D) 17} So I took hold of the two tablets and flung them from my two hands, smashing them before your eyes. ¹⁸ Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all the sin you had committed, provoking the Lord by doing what was evil in his sight.^{(E) 19} For I was afraid that the anger that the Lord bore against you was so fierce that he would destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also.^{(F) 20} The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him, but I interceded also on behalf of Aaron at that same time. ²¹ Then I took the sinful thing you had made, the calf, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly, until it was reduced to dust, and I threw the dust into the stream that runs down the mountain.^(G)