The Golden Calf

32 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain,^(A) they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods^[a] who will go before^(B) us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”^(C)

⁴⁰ They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’^[a](A)

⁹ When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant^(A) that the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days^(B) and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water.^(C)

⁴ They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?^(A) Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”^(B)

⁴⁸ But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’

¹⁸ Then Moses entered the cloud as he went on up the mountain. And he stayed on the mountain forty^(A) days and forty nights.^(B)

¹¹ At the end of the forty days and forty nights,^(A) the Lord gave me the two stone tablets,^(B) the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord told me, “Go down from here at once, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt.^(C) They have turned away quickly^(D) from what I commanded them and have made an idol for themselves.”

²⁹ “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.^(A)

²⁶ And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus^(A) and in practically the whole province of Asia.^(B) He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all.^(C)