⁷ Remember, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the wilderness; ^(A)from the day that you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. ⁸ Even ^(B)at Horeb you provoked the Lord to anger, and the Lord was so angry with you that He would have destroyed you. ⁹ When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord made with you, then I remained on the mountain for forty days and nights; ^(C)I neither ate bread nor drank water. ¹⁰ The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone ^(D)written by the finger of God; and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. ¹¹ It came about ^(E)at the end of forty days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. ^12 (F)Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down from here quickly, because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have behaved corruptly. They have ^(G)quickly turned aside from the way that I commanded them; they have made a cast metal image for themselves.’ ¹³ The ^(H)Lord also said to ^[a]me, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a ^[b](I)stubborn people. ^14 (J)Leave Me alone, that I may destroy them and ^(K)wipe out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’

¹⁵ “^(L)So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a cast metal image of a calf; you had quickly turned aside from the way that the Lord had commanded you. ¹⁷ So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands, and smashed them to pieces before your eyes! ^18 (M)Then I fell down before the Lord ^(N)like the first time, for forty days and nights; ^(O)I neither ate bread nor drank water, ^(P)because of all your sin which you had committed by doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. ¹⁹ For ^(Q)I was afraid of the anger and the rage with which the Lord was angry with you so as to destroy you; ^(R)but the Lord listened to me that time as well. ²⁰ The Lord was also angry enough with Aaron to destroy him; so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. ^21 (S)And I took your ^[c]sinful thing which you had made, the calf, and burned it in the fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the stream that came down from the mountain.

²² “Then at ^(T)Taberah, at ^(U)Massah, and at ^(V)Kibroth-hattaavah you kept provoking the Lord to anger. ²³ And when the Lord sent you from ^(W)Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘^(X)Go up and take possession of the land which I have given you,’ you rebelled against the ^[d]command of the Lord your God; ^(Y)you neither trusted Him nor listened to His voice. ^24 (Z)You have been rebellious toward the Lord since the day I knew you.