1 When the people saw that
Moshe was taking a long time to come down from the mountain, they
gathered around Aharon and said to him, "Get busy; and make us
gods to go ahead of us; because this Moshe, the man that brought us
up from the land of Egypt - we don't know what has become of
him."
2 Aharon said to them,
"Have your wives, sons and daughters strip off their gold
earrings; and bring them to me."
3 The people stripped off
their gold earrings and brought them to Aharon.
4 He received what they gave
him, melted it down, and made it into the shape of a calf. They
said, "Isra'el! Here is your god, who brought you up from the
land of Egypt!"
5 On seeing this, Aharon
built an altar in front of it and proclaimed, "Tomorrow is to
be a feast for ADONAI."
6 Early the next morning they
got up and offered burnt offerings and presented peace offerings.
Afterwards, the people sat down to eat and drink; then they got up
to indulge in revelry.
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.
15 Moshe turned and went down
from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand,
tablets inscribed on both sides, on the front and on the back.
16 The tablets were the work
of God; and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the
tablets.
17 When Y'hoshua heard the
noise of the people shouting he said to Moshe, "It sounds like
war in the camp!"
18 He answered, "That is
neither the clamor of victory nor the wailings of defeat; what I
hear is the sound of people singing."
19 But the moment Moshe got
near the camp, when he saw the calf and the dancing, his own anger
blazed up. He threw down the tablets he had been holding and
shattered them at the base of the mountain.
20 Seizing the calf they had
made, he melted it in the fire and ground it to powder, which he
scattered on the water. Then he made the people of Isra'el drink it.
21 Moshe said to Aharon,
"What did these people do to you to make you lead them into
such a terrible sin?"
22 Aharon replied, "My
lord shouldn't be so angry. You know what these people are like,
that they are determined to do evil.
23 So they said to me, 'Make
us gods to go ahead of us; because this Moshe, the man that brought
us up from the land of Egypt - we don't know what has become of
him.'
24 I answered them, 'Anyone
with gold, strip it off!' So they gave it to me. I threw it in the
fire, and out came this calf!"
25 When Moshe saw that the
people had gotten out of control - because Aharon had allowed them
to get out of control, to the derision of their enemies -
26 Moshe stood at the
entrance to the camp and shouted, "Whoever is for ADONAI, come
to me!"All the descendants of Levi rallied around him.
27 He told them, "Here
is what ADONAI, the God of Isra'el, says: 'Each of you, put his
sword on his side; and go up and down the camp, from gate to gate;
and every man is to kill his own kinsman, his own friend and his own
neighbor!"
28 The sons of Levi did what
Moshe said, and that day three thousand of the people died.
29 Moshe said, "You have
consecrated yourselves today to ADONAI, because every one of you has
been against his own son and against his own kinsman, in order to
bring a blessing on yourselves today."
30 The next day Moshe said to
the people, "You have committed a terrible sin. Now I will go
up to ADONAI ; maybe I will be able to atone for your
sin."
31 Moshe went back to ADONAI
and said, "Please! These people have committed a terrible sin:
they have made themselves a god out of gold.
32 Now, if you will just
forgive their sin! But if you won't, then, I beg you, blot me out of
your book which you have written!"
33 ADONAI answered Moshe,
"Those who have sinned against me are the ones I will blot out
of my book.
34 Now go and lead the people
to the place I told you about; my angel will go ahead of you.
Nevertheless, the time for punishment will come; and then I will
punish them for their sin."
35 ADONAI struck the people
with a plague because they had made the calf, the one Aharon made.
