Golden calf out of the way which God commanded them and he was going to destroy them and start a new people from Moses. Moses besought and pleaded that they should be spared (), and God "repented of the evil which He said He would do unto His people." Moses went down from the mountain, but upon seeing the calf, he became angry and threw down the two Tablets of Stone, breaking them. Moses burnt the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. When Moses asked him, Aaron admitted
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image a divine speech to Moses, Yahweh reveals the events going on at the base of Mt. Sinai to Moses, judging the golden calf to be a violation of the recently revealed law: "They have turned aside quickly from the way that I commanded them". Others point out that the golden calf episode leads to the breaking of the tablets of the Decalogue, something that implies that the covenant had been violated. This event and the plurality of the language used in the second commandment leads many scholars to conclude that it prohibits the making of any image of Yahweh as