So the sovereign took counsel and made two calves of gold, and said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Yerushalayim. See, your mighty ones, O Yisra’ĕ
but you have done more evil than all who were before you, for you have gone and made for yourself other mighty ones and moulded images to provoke Me, and have cast Me behind your back –
come, let us act wisely towards them, lest they increase, and it shall be when fighting befalls us, that they shall join our enemies and fight against us, and shall go up out of the land.”
“You do not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of that which is in the heavens above, or which is in the earth beneath, or which is in the waters under the earth,
“They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a moulded calf, and have bowed themselves to it and slaughtered to it, and said, ‘This is your mighty one, O Yisra’ĕ
“Woe to the stubborn children,” declares יהוה, “to make counsel, but not from Me, and to devise plans, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin;
“And she did not forsake her whorings from Mitsrayim, for in her youth they had lain with her, and they squeezed her maiden nipples, and poured out their whorings on her.