This is what the Lord, your protector, ¹  says, the one who formed you in the womb: “I am the Lord, who made everything, who alone stretched out the sky, who fashioned the earth all by myself, ² 

“Before I formed you in your mother’s womb ¹  I chose you. ²  Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

Above the platform over their heads was something like a sapphire shaped like a throne. High above on the throne was a form that appeared to be a man.

So since we are God’s offspring, we should not think the deity ¹  is like gold or silver or stone, an image ²  made by human ³  skill ⁴  and imagination. ⁵ 

Then ¹  a measuring rod ²  like a staff was given to me, and I was told, ³  “Get up and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and the ones who worship there.

They have quickly turned aside ¹  from the way that I commanded them – they have made for themselves a molten calf and have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.’”

And the people went about and gathered it, and ground it with mills or pounded it in mortars; they baked it in pans and made cakes of it. It tasted like fresh olive oil. ¹ 

The total weight of the gold earrings he requested came to seventeen hundred gold shekels. ¹  This was in addition to the crescent-shaped ornaments, jewelry, ²  purple clothing worn by the Midianite kings, and the necklaces on the camels. ³ 

Each of the pillars was about twenty-seven feet ¹  high. The bronze top of one pillar was about four and a half feet ²  high and had bronze latticework and pomegranate shaped ornaments all around it. The second pillar with its latticework was like it.

Even now they persist in sin! ¹  They make metal images for themselves, idols that they skillfully fashion ²  from their own silver; all of them are nothing but the work of craftsmen! There is a saying about them: ³  “Those who sacrifice ⁴  to the calf idol are calf kissers!” ⁵ 

For here he is! He ¹  formed the mountains and created the wind. He reveals ²  his plans ³  to men. He turns the dawn into darkness ⁴  and marches on the heights of the earth. The Lord, the God who commands armies, ⁵  is his name!”

But this knowledge is not shared by all. And some, by being accustomed to idols in former times, eat this food as an idol sacrifice, and their conscience, because it is weak, is defiled.