My comments are inside the passage in italics.
Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets. The preceding two sentences emphatically stress that the tablets were prepared by God and that He was directly responsible for what was written on them! They are important! When Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” But he said, “It is not the sound of shouting for victory, or the sound of the cry of defeat, but the sound of singing that I hear.” Joshua was able to hear the sound of the camp and the meaning of the sound as they descended. Was Moses beginning to go slightly deaf? Certainly not to what God was saying to him, but as we read on what Joshua heard didn’t make Moses’ anger boil over until they got nearer! And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. A second copy was later provided with God writing on stone tablets that Moses hewed into shape. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it. Gold has to be very hot to melt and this may lead to some skepticism as to the truth of the Israelites having to drink their idol! I copy here a piece from Wikipedia. ‘Ancient civilizations melted and shaped gold using charcoal furnaces and techniques like the lost-wax process. They used blowpipes to control airflow and create intense heat, allowing them to reach the melting point of gold (around 1,948°F). Slag (impurities) was skimmed off the molten gold, and then the metal was shaped into desired objects using molds and possibly hammers and anvils.’ How much melting was combined with grinding the gold up? I don’t know, but I can just imagine their horror as being forced to drink their wealth!
And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought such a great sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said to me, ‘Make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ So I said to them, ‘Let any who have gold take it off.’ So they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf.” Aaron lied! Is Moses going to get angry with him also? Is there further punishment to come? Tomorrow we should get answers to these questions.
Prayer: Please help me to be truthful even when it is to my own detriment, Father God.
As I read it! 