Deuteronomy 9:16–24

¹⁶And I saw how you had sinned against the LORD your God; you had made for yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded you. ¹⁷So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, shattering them before your eyes.

¹⁸Then I fell down before the LORD for forty days and forty nights, as I had done the first time. I did not eat bread or drink water because of all the sin you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD and provoking Him to anger. ¹⁹For I was afraid^b of the anger and wrath that the LORD had directed against you, enough to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me this time as well.

²⁰The LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but at that time I also prayed for Aaron. ²¹And I took that sinful thing, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire. Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust, and I cast it into the stream that came down from the mountain.

²²You continued to provoke the LORD at Taberah,^c at Massah,^d and at Kibroth-hattaavah.^{e 23}And when the LORD sent you out from Kadesh-barnea, He said, “Go up and possess the land that I have given you.”

But you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You neither believed Him nor obeyed Him. ²⁴You have been rebelling against the LORD since the day I came to know you.