Deuteronomy 9:15-17

Amplified Bible

¹⁵“So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. ¹⁶And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten ^[a]calf (idol). You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you.^(A) ¹⁷So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my two hands and smashed them before your very eyes!

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Footnotes

Deuteronomy 9:16 The selection of a calf-god was probably inspired by the Egyptian bull-god Apis (Hapis), believed to be a living manifestation of the Egyptian god, Ptah. In ancient Egypt, a bull-calf with specific markings was selected from the herd and designated and worshiped as Apis. The Apis was the most important of the sacred animals of Egypt. At the age of twenty-eight the Apis bull was sacrificed and buried in a highly structured ritual and a new bull-calf was selected to take his place. Numerous elaborate burial sites containing the Apis bulls have been discovered in Egypt. Both the Greeks and Romans adopted the cultic worship of Apis and it continued until about a.d. 400.