Deuteronomy 9:17

"And I took hold of the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your eyes. And I fell down before Jehovah, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I did neither eat bread nor drink water; because of all your sin which ye sinned, in doing that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, wherewith Jehovah was wroth against you to destroy you. But Jehovah hearkened unto me that time also. And Jehovah was very angry with Aaron to destroy him: and I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. And I took your sin, the calf which he had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, grinding it very small, until it was fine as dust: and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount."

This entire chapter is an insurmountable obstacle to the impossible notion that Jewish priests of the seventh century B.C. composed Deuteronomy. If they did, why all this record of the terrible sin of Aaron, the ancestral head of their priesthood? No. If Jewish priests had anything to do with the Pentateuch, such records as these would never have appeared.

The breaking of the tables of stone (Deuteronomy 9:17), according to the ideas of those days, "signified the end of the covenant."[26] This would have been the end of God's dealings with Israel, except for the intercessory prayers of Moses. Exodus says nothing of Moses' praying for Aaron, but as the principal in those events Moses had every right to supplement any of those events with material which he deemed appropriate here.

Having already recited at length, in a condensed form, the awful rebellion in the matter of the golden calf, Moses next recounted some other serious defections of the people.