The Sin of the Golden Calf and the Broken Tablets

Moses went up for forty days. The people, who had just heard a voice from heaven, miscounted the days and concluded their leader was gone. They surrounded Aaron: make us a god to go before us, for this man Moses, who brought us up, we do not know what became of him. In the Torah's telling Aaron played for time, asking for the gold earrings of their wives and children in the hope that collecting them would take days. The gold arrived at once. A molten calf came out of it, and a festival was declared. God told Moses to go down, and offered to destroy the people and make a nation from him instead. Moses refused and argued on their behalf. He came down with the two tablets, saw the calf and the dancing, and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. He burned the calf, ground it to powder and made the people drink it. The Levites rallied to him; three thousand died. This is the seventeenth of Tammuz, a fast day ever since.