16. I saw that you had already disobeyed the command that the Lord your God had given you, and that you had sinned against him by making yourselves a metal idol in the form of a bull calf.
17. So there in front of you I threw the stone tablets down and broke them to pieces.
18. Then once again I lay face downwards in the Lord's presence for forty days and nights and did not eat or drink anything. I did this because you had sinned against the Lord and had made him angry.
19. I was afraid of the Lord's fierce anger, because he was furious enough to destroy you; but once again the Lord listened to me.
20. The Lord was also angry enough with Aaron to kill him, so I prayed for Aaron at the same time.
21. I took that sinful thing that you had made — that metal bull calf — and threw it into the fire. Then I broke it in pieces, ground it to dust, and threw the dust into the stream that flowed down the mountain.