13. And Yahweh spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and look! They are a stubborn people.
14. Leave me alone, and let me destroy them, and let me blot out their name from under heaven, and let me make you into a nation mightier and more numerous than they!’
15. “And I turned, and I went down the mountain, as the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.
16. And I looked, and indeed you had sinned against Yahweh your God; you had made for yourselves an image of a calf of cast metal; you had turned quickly from the way that Yahweh had commanded for you.
17. And I took hold of the two tablets, and I threw them out of my two hands and smashed them before your eyes.
18. And then I lay prostrate before Yahweh, as earlier, forty days and forty nights; I did not eat food and I did not drink water because of all your sins that you committed, by doing evil in the eyes of Yahweh and so provoking him.
19. For I was in dread from being in the presence of the anger and the wrath with which Yahweh was angry with you so as to destroy you, but Yahweh listened to me also at that time.