8. Even at Horeb you angered the Lord! He was so enraged by you that he threatened to wipe you out.
9. When I went up on the mountain to get the stone tablets, the covenant tablets that the Lord made with you, I was up there forty days and forty nights. I ate no bread, drank no water.
10. The Lord gave me the two stone tablets, written by God’s finger, and on them were all the words that the Lord had said to you on the mountain, out of the very fire itself, on the day we assembled.
11. At the end of those forty days and nights, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets—the covenant tablets.
12. Then the Lord said to me, "Get going! Get down from here quickly because your people, whom you brought out of Egypt, have ruined everything! They couldn’t wait to turn from the path I commanded them! They’ve made themselves an idol out of cast metal."
13. The Lord said more to me: "I have seen this people. Look! What a stubborn people they are!
14. Now stand back. I am going to wipe them out. I will erase their name from under heaven, then I will make a nation out of you—one stronger and larger than they were."
15. So I went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire. The two covenant tablets were in my two hands.
16. It was then that I saw how you sinned against the Lord your God: you made yourselves a calf, an idol made of cast metal! You couldn’t wait to turn from the path the Lord commanded you!