Daily Reading for Monday, July 29th, 2019

Reading 1, Exodus 32:15-24, 30-34

¹⁵ Moses turned and came down the mountain with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, tablets inscribed on both sides, inscribed on the front and on the back.

¹⁶ The tablets were the work of God, and the writing on them was God's writing, engraved on the tablets.

¹⁷ When Joshua heard the noise of the people shouting, he said to Moses, 'There is the sound of battle in the camp!'

¹⁸ But he replied: No song of victory is this sound, no lament for defeat this sound; but answering choruses I hear!

¹⁹ And there, as he approached the camp, he saw the calf and the groups dancing. Moses blazed with anger. He threw down the tablets he was holding, shattering them at the foot of the mountain.

²⁰ He seized the calf they had made and burned it, grinding it into powder which he scattered on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.

²¹ Moses then said to Aaron, 'What have these people done to you for you to have brought so great a sin on them?'

²² Aaron replied, 'My lord should not be so angry. You yourself know what a bad state these people are in!

²³ They said to me, "Make us a god to go at our head; for that Moses, the man who brought us here from Egypt -- we do not know what has become of him."

²⁴ I then said to them, "Anyone with gold, strip it off!" They gave it to me. I threw it into the fire and out came this calf!'

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 106:19-20, 21-22, 23

¹⁹ At Horeb they made a calf, bowed low before cast metal;

²⁰ they exchanged their glory for the image of a grass-eating bull.

²¹ They forgot the God who was saving them, who had done great deeds in Egypt,

²² such wonders in the land of Ham, such awesome deeds at the Sea of Reeds.

²³ He thought of putting an end to them, had not Moses, his chosen one, taken a stand in the breach and confronted him, to turn his anger away from destroying them.