The LORD replied, "Go down and bring Aaron back with you. But the priests and the people must not cross the boundary to come up to me, or I will punish them."

The LORD said to Moses, "Leave this place, you and the people you brought out of Egypt, and go to the land that I promised to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to their descendants.

"Then the LORD said to me, 'Go down the mountain at once, because your people, whom you led out of Egypt, have become corrupt and have done evil. They have already turned away from what I commanded them to do, and they have made an idol for themselves.'

"Seven times seventy years is the length of time God has set for freeing your people and your holy city from sin and evil. Sin will be forgiven and eternal justice established, so that the vision and the prophecy will come true, and the holy Temple will be rededicated.

When the people saw that Moses had not come down from the mountain but was staying there a long time, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, "We do not know what has happened to this man Moses, who led us out of Egypt; so make us a god to lead us."

But Moses pleaded with the LORD his God and said, " LORD, why should you be so angry with your people, whom you rescued from Egypt with great might and power?

but everyone else was evil in God's sight, and violence had spread everywhere.

God looked at the world and saw that it was evil, for the people were all living evil lives.

that you do not sin by making for yourselves an idol in any form at all---whether man or woman,

But you are unfaithful, unworthy to be his people, a sinful and deceitful nation.

But when the leader died, the people would return to the old ways and behave worse than the previous generation. They would serve and worship other gods, and stubbornly continue their own evil ways.

They are hopelessly evil in what they do, just as they were at Gibeah. God will remember their sin and punish them for it.