37
This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.'
38
This is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness with our ancestors and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai. He is the one who received life-giving words to give to us.
39
He's also the one whom our ancestors refused to obey. Instead, they pushed him aside and, in their thoughts and desires, returned to Egypt.
40
They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods that will lead us. As for this Moses who led us out of Egypt, we don't know what's happened to him!'
41
That's when they made an idol in the shape of a calf, offered a sacrifice to it, and began to celebrate what they had made with their own hands.
42
So God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the stars in the sky, just as it is written in the scroll of the Prophets: Did you bring sacrifices and offerings to me for forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel?
43
No! Instead, you took the tent of Moloch with you, and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made in order to worship them. Therefore, I will send you far away, farther than Babylon.
44
“The tent of testimony was with our ancestors in the wilderness. Moses built it just as he had been instructed by the one who spoke to him and according to the pattern he had seen.
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In time, when they had received the tent, our ancestors carried it with them when, under Joshua's leadership, they took possession of the land from the nations whom God expelled. This tent remained in the land until the time of David.
46
God approved of David, who asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob.
47
But it was Solomon who actually built a house for God.