Moses in Islam grabbed hold of Aaron by his beard and admonished him for doing nothing to stop them. But when Aaron told Moses of his fruitless attempt to stop them, Moses understood his helplessness and they both prayed to God for forgiveness. Moses then questioned Samiri for creating the Golden Calf. Samiri replied that it had occurred to him and he had done so. Samiri was exiled and the Golden Calf was burned to ashes, and the ashes were thrown into the sea. The wrong-doers who had worshipped the Calf were ordered to be killed for their crime. Moses then chose seventy
Golden calf J (Exodus 34), this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The Golden Calf story is only in the E version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the J story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources. Archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman say that while archaeology has found traces left by small bands of hunter-gatherers in the Sinai, there is no