²³ They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’^{(A) 24} So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”^(B)

²⁵ Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock^(C) to their enemies.