Deuteronomy 9:13-21

New Living Translation

¹³ “The Lord also said to me, ‘I have seen how stubborn and rebellious these people are. ¹⁴ Leave me alone so I may destroy them and erase their name from under heaven. Then I will make a mighty nation of your descendants, a nation larger and more powerful than they are.’

¹⁵ “So while the mountain was blazing with fire I turned and came down, holding in my hands the two stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant. ¹⁶ There below me I could see that you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had melted gold and made a calf idol for yourselves. How quickly you had turned away from the path the Lord had commanded you to follow! ¹⁷ So I took the stone tablets and threw them to the ground, smashing them before your eyes.

¹⁸ “Then, as before, I threw myself down before the Lord for forty days and nights. I ate no bread and drank no water because of the great sin you had committed by doing what the Lord hated, provoking him to anger. ¹⁹ I feared that the furious anger of the Lord, which turned him against you, would drive him to destroy you. But again he listened to me. ²⁰ The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he wanted to destroy him, too. But I prayed for Aaron, and the Lord spared him. ²¹ I took your sin—the calf you had made—and I melted it down in the fire and ground it into fine dust. Then I threw the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.