⁷ Adonai said to Moshe, “Go down! Hurry! Your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have become corrupt! ⁸ So quickly they have turned aside from the way I ordered them to follow! They have cast a metal statue of a calf, worshipped it, sacrificed to it and said, ‘Isra’el! Here is your god, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!’” ⁹ Adonai continued speaking to Moshe: “I have been watching these people; and you can see how stiffnecked they are. ¹⁰ Now leave me alone, so that my anger can blaze against them, and I can put an end to them! I will make a great nation out of you instead.”

¹¹ Moshe pleaded with Adonai his God. He said, “Adonai, why must your anger blaze against your own people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand? ¹² Why let the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intentions that he led them out, to slaughter them in the hills and wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger! Relent! Don’t bring such disaster on your people! ¹³ Remember Avraham, Yitz’chak and Isra’el, your servants, to whom you swore by your very self. You promised them, ‘I will make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky; and I will give all this land I have spoken about to your descendants; and they will possess it forever.’” ¹⁴ Adonai then changed his mind about the disaster he had planned for his people.

⁷ The people came to Moshe and said, “We sinned by speaking against Adonai and against you. Pray to Adonai that he rid us of these snakes.” Moshe prayed for the people,

⁸ Also in Horev you made Adonai angry — Adonai was angry enough with you to destroy you! ⁹ I had gone up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets on which was written the covenant Adonai had made with you. I stayed on the mountain forty days and nights without eating food or drinking water.

¹² Then Adonai said to me, ‘Get up, and hurry down from here, because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have become corrupt. So quickly have they turned aside from the way I ordered them to follow! They have made themselves a metal image!’ ¹³ Moreover, Adonai said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and what a stiffnecked people they are! ¹⁴ Let me alone, so that I can put an end to them and blot out their name from under heaven! I will make out of you a nation bigger and stronger than they.’ ¹⁵ I came down from the mountain. The mountain was blazing fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶ I looked, and there, you had sinned against Adonai your God! You had made yourselves a metal calf, you had turned aside quickly from the way Adonai had ordered you to follow. ¹⁷ I seized the two tablets, threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. ¹⁸ Then I fell down before Adonai, as I had the first time, for forty days and nights, during which time I neither ate food nor drank water, all because of the sin you committed by doing what was evil in the sight of Adonai and thus provoking him. ¹⁹ I was terrified that because of how angry Adonai was at you, of how heatedly displeased he was, that he would destroy you. But Adonai listened to me that time too. ²⁰ In addition, Adonai was very angry with Aharon and would have destroyed him; but I prayed for Aharon also at the same time.

²³ and when Adonai sent you off from Kadesh-Barnea by saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land I have given you,’ you rebelled against the order of Adonai your God — you neither trusted him nor heeded what he said. ²⁴ You have been rebelling against Adonai from the day I first knew you!

²⁵ “So I fell down before Adonai for those forty days and nights; and I lay there; because Adonai had said he would destroy you. ²⁶ I prayed to Adonai ; I said, ‘Adonai Elohim! Don’t destroy your people, your inheritance! You redeemed them through your greatness, you brought them out of Egypt with a strong hand! ²⁷ Remember your servants Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya‘akov! Don’t focus on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or on their sin.