So the king sought counsel and made two golden calves. He said to them, “You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough! Here are your gods O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
Then he placed the carved image of the idol that he had made in the House of God—of which God had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this House and in Jerusalem that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My Name forever.
Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Get up, make us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what’s become of him!”
They said to me, ‘Make gods for us, to go before us! As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what happened to him.’
He received them from their hand, and made a molten calf, fashioned with a chiseling tool. Then they said, “This is your god, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
They quickly turned aside from the path that I commanded for them. They have made a molten calf, worshipped it, and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’”
I said to them, ‘Each of you must throw away every detestable thing from his eyes, and not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am Adonai your God.’
So I went in and saw, behold, every detestable image of creeping things and beasts and all the idols of the house of Israel, engraved on the surrounding walls.
Something like the form of a hand stretched out, and took me by the hair of my head. The Ruach lifted me up between the earth and the heaven. He brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the gate of the inner court facing north—where the idol that provokes furious jealousy was.
“You are not to make idols for yourselves, nor raise up an engraved image or a standing-stone, or place any carved stone in your land to bow down to it. For I am Adonai your God.
I speak with him face to face, plainly and not in riddles. He even looks at the form of Adonai! Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?”
‘Cursed is the one who makes a carved or molten image—an abomination to Adonai, the work of a craftsman’s hands—and sets it up in secret.’ Then all the people are to answer and say, ‘Amen.’
So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and foul and painful boils came upon the people having the mark of the beast and worshiping his image.
But the rest of mankind, those not killed by these plagues, did not repent and turn away from the works of their hands—they would not stop worshiping demons and the idols of gold and silver and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk.
And he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, “I wholly dedicate the silver from my hand to Adonai for my son to make a graven image and a molten image; now therefore. I will return it to you.”