Deuteronomy 9:12

9:12 And he said to me, “Get up, go down at once from here because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have sinned! They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them and have made for themselves a cast metal image.” ¹ 

Deuteronomy 9:21

9:21 As for your sinful thing ²  that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ³  ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.

Deuteronomy 20:20

20:20 However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, ⁴  and you may use it to build siege works ⁵  against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

Deuteronomy 21:4

21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, ⁶  to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. ⁷  There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck.

Deuteronomy 26:5

26:5 Then you must affirm before the Lord your God, “A wandering ⁸  Aramean ⁹  was my ancestor, ¹⁰  and he went down to Egypt and lived there as a foreigner with a household few in number, ¹¹  but there he became a great, powerful, and numerous people.

Deuteronomy 28:52

28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ¹²  until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you.

¹ tc Heb “a casting.” The MT reads מַסֵּכָה (massekhah, “a cast thing”) but some mss and Smr add עֵגֶל (’egel, “calf”), “a molten calf” or the like (Exod 32:8). Perhaps Moses here omits reference to the calf out of contempt for it.

² tn Heb “your sin.” This is a metonymy in which the effect (sin) stands for the cause (the metal calf).

³ tn Heb “burned it with fire.”

³ tn Heb “however, a tree which you know is not a tree for food you may destroy and cut down.”

⁴ tn Heb “[an] enclosure.” The term מָצוֹר (matsor) may refer to encircling ditches or to surrounding stagings. See R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 238.

⁴ tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.

⁵ sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.

⁵ tn Though the Hebrew term אָבַד (’avad) generally means “to perish” or the like (HALOT 2-3 s.v.; BDB 1-2 s.v.; cf. KJV “a Syrian ready to perish”), a meaning “to go astray” or “to be lost” is also attested. The ambivalence in the Hebrew text is reflected in the versions where LXX Vaticanus reads ἀπέβαλεν (apebalen, “lose”) for a possibly metathesized reading found in Alexandrinus, Ambrosianus, ἀπέλαβεν (apelaben, “receive”); others attest κατέλειπεν (kateleipen, “leave, abandon”). “Wandering” seems to suit best the contrast with the sedentary life Israel would enjoy in Canaan (v. 9) and is the meaning followed by many English versions.

⁶ sn A wandering Aramean. This is a reference to Jacob whose mother Rebekah was an Aramean (Gen 24:10; 25:20, 26) and who himself lived in Aram for at least twenty years (Gen 31:41-42).

⁷ tn Heb “father.”

⁸ tn Heb “sojourned there few in number.” The words “with a household” have been supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons and for clarity.

⁶ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.