Daily Reading for Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

Reading 1, Exodus 32:7-14

⁷ Yahweh then said to Moses, 'Go down at once, for your people whom you brought here from Egypt have become corrupt.

⁸ They have quickly left the way which I ordered them to follow. They have cast themselves a metal calf, worshipped it and offered sacrifice to it, shouting, "Israel, here is your God who brought you here from Egypt!" '

⁹ Yahweh then said to Moses, 'I know these people; I know how obstinate they are!

¹⁰ So leave me now, so that my anger can blaze at them and I can put an end to them! I shall make a great nation out of you instead.'

¹¹ Moses tried to pacify Yahweh his God. 'Yahweh,' he said, 'why should your anger blaze at your people, whom you have brought out of Egypt by your great power and mighty hand?

¹² Why should the Egyptians say, "He brought them out with evil intention, to slaughter them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth?" Give up your burning wrath; relent over this disaster intended for your people.

¹³ Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom you swore by your very self and made this promise: "I shall make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and this whole country of which I have spoken, I shall give to your descendants, and it will be their heritage for ever."

¹⁴ Yahweh then relented over the disaster which he had intended to inflict on his people.

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.

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