Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said to them, It is too much for you to go up to Yerushalayim: see your gods, Yisra'el, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it, and have sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, Yisra'el, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.'*
You shall defile the overlaying of your engraved images of silver, and the plating of your molten images of gold. You shall cast them away as an unclean thing. You shall tell it, *Go away!*
Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations: they have no knowledge who carry the wood of their engraved image, and pray to a god that can't save.
Every man is become brutish [and is] without knowledge; every goldsmith is disappointed by his engraved image; for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.
There is silver beaten into plates, which is brought from Tarshish, and gold from Ufaz, the work of the artificer and of the hands of the goldsmith; blue and purple for their clothing; they are all the work of skillful men.
Nevukhadnetzar 1 the king made an image of gold, whose height was sixty cubits, and the breadth of it six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Bavel.
Now they sin more and more, and have made themselves molten images of their silver, even idols according to their own understanding, all of them the work of the craftsmen. They say of them, 'They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calves.'