14. Get away so that I may destroy them and make the whole world forget who they are. Then I will make another nation from you that will be bigger and stronger than they are.”
15. So I turned and came down the mountain that was burning with fire, and the two stone tablets with the Agreement were in my hands.
16. When I looked, I saw you had sinned against the Lord your God and had made an idol in the shape of a calf. You had quickly turned away from what the Lord had told you to do.
17. So I took the two stone tablets and threw them down, breaking them into pieces right in front of you.
18. Then I again bowed facedown on the ground before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I did not eat bread or drink water. You had sinned by doing what the Lord said was evil, and you made him angry.
19. I was afraid of the Lord’s anger and rage, because he was angry enough with you to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me again.
20. And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, but then I prayed for Aaron, too.
21. I took that sinful calf idol you had made and burned it in the fire. I crushed it into a powder like dust and threw the dust into a stream that flowed down the mountain.
22. You also made the Lord angry at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth Hattaavah.
23. Then the Lord sent you away from Kadesh Barnea and said, “Go up and take the land I have given you.” But you rejected the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him.
24. You have refused to obey the Lord as long as I have known you.
25. The Lord had said he would destroy you, so I threw myself down in front of him for those forty days and forty nights.
26. I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your own people, whom you freed and brought out of Egypt by your great power and strength.
27. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don’t look at how stubborn these people are, and don’t look at their sin and evil.
28. Otherwise, Egypt will say, ‘It was because the Lord was not able to take his people into the land he promised them, and it was because he hated them that he took them into the desert to kill them.’