36. He led the people out of Egypt, performing miracles and wonders in Egypt and at the Red Sea and for forty years in the desert.
37. Moses is the one who said to the people of Israel, ‘God will send you a prophet, just as he sent me, and he will be one of your own people.’
38. He is the one who was with the people of Israel assembled in the desert; he was there with our ancestors and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and he received God's living messages to pass on to us.
39. “But our ancestors refused to obey him; they pushed him aside and wished that they could go back to Egypt.
40. So they said to Aaron, ‘Make us some gods who will lead us. We do not know what has happened to that man Moses, who brought us out of Egypt.’
41. It was then that they made an idol in the shape of a bull, offered sacrifice to it, and had a feast in honour of what they themselves had made.
42. So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:‘People of Israel! It was not to methat you slaughtered and sacrificed animalsfor forty years in the desert.