5. You are going in to take the land, not because you are good and honest, but because these nations are evil. That is why the Lord your God will force them out ahead of you, to keep his promise to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
6. The Lord your God is giving you this good land to take as your own. But know this: It is not because you are good; you are a stubborn people.
7. Remember this and do not forget it: You made the Lord your God angry in the desert. You would not obey the Lord from the day you left Egypt until you arrived here.
8. At Mount Sinai you made the Lord angry—angry enough to destroy you.
9. When I went up on the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets with the Agreement the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights; I did not eat bread or drink water.
10. The Lord gave me two stone tablets, which God had written on with his own finger. On them were all the commands that the Lord gave to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day you were gathered there.
11. When the forty days and forty nights were over, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets with the Agreement on them.
12. Then the Lord told me, “Get up and go down quickly from here, because the people you brought out from Egypt are ruining themselves. They have quickly turned away from what I commanded and have made an idol for themselves.”
13. The Lord said to me, “I have watched these people, and they are very stubborn!
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.