“And what made you rush ahead of your people, O Moses?”
He said, “They are following in my footsteps; and I hurried on to You, my Lord, that you may be pleased.”
He said, “We have tested your people in your absence, and the Samarian misled them.”
So Moses returned to his people, angry and disappointed. He said, “O my people, did your Lord not promise you a good promise? Was the time too long for you? Or did you want wrath from your Lord to descend upon you, so you broke your promise to me?”
They said, “We did not break our promise to you by our choice, but we were made to carry loads of the people’s ornaments, and we cast them in. That was what the Samarian suggested.”
So he produced for them a calf—a mere body which lowed. And they said, “This is your god, and the god of Moses, but he has forgotten.”
Did they not see that it cannot return a word to them, and has no power to harm them or benefit them?
Aaron had said to them before, “O my people, you are being tested by this. And your Lord is the Merciful, so follow me, and obey my command.”
They said, “We will not give up our devotion to it, until Moses returns to us.”
He said, “I saw what they did not see, so I grasped a handful from the Messenger’s traces, and I flung it away. Thus my soul prompted me.”
He said, “Begone! Your lot in this life is to say, ‘No contact.’ And you have an appointment that you will not miss. Now look at your god that you remained devoted to—we will burn it up, and then blow it away into the sea, as powder.”
Surely your god is God, the One besides whom there is no other god. He comprehends everything in knowledge.
