14. Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.’
15. So I turned and went down from the mountain while it was ablaze with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.
16. When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God; you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you.
17. So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them to pieces before your eyes.
18. Then once again I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger.
19. I feared the anger and wrath of the Lord, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the Lord listened to me.