⁷ For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills,^{(A) 8} a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, ⁹ a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. ¹⁰ You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.^(B)

¹¹ “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes that I am commanding you today. ¹² When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them ¹³ and when your herds and flocks have multiplied and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,^{(C) 15} who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous^[a] snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock.^{(D) 16} He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you and in the end to do you good.^{(E) 17} Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.^{(F) 19} If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.^{(G) 20} Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

The Golden Calf

32 When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”^{(A) 2} Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters and bring them to me.”^{(B) 3} So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears and brought them to Aaron. ⁴ He took these from them, formed them in a mold,^[a] and cast an image of a calf, and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”^{(C) 5} When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” ⁶ They rose early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being, and the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to revel.^(D)

⁷ The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely;^{(E) 8} they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ”^{(F) 9} The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.^{(G) 10} Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”^(H)

¹¹ But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?^{(I) 12} Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.^{(J) 13} Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ”^{(K) 14} And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.^(L)