7. The Lord said to Moses, Go down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves;
8. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, These are your gods, O Israel, that brought you up out of the land of Egypt!
9. And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people;
10. Now therefore let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and that I may destroy them; but I will make of you a great nation.
11. But Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why does Your wrath blaze hot against Your people, whom You have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?
12. Why should the Egyptians say, For evil He brought them forth, to slay them in the mountains and consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and change Your mind concerning this evil against Your people.
13. [Earnestly] remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self and said to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever.
14. Then the Lord turned from the evil which He had thought to do to His people.
15. And Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tables of the Testimony in his hand, tables or tablets that were written on both sides.
16. The tables were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
17. And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.
18. But Moses said, It is not the sound of shouting for victory, neither is it the sound of the cry of the defeated, but the sound of singing that I hear.
19. And as soon as he came near to the camp he saw the calf and the dancing. And Moses' anger blazed hot and he cast the tables out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.