When Moses withdrew to the mountain to commune with his Lord and to receive the Torah from the very hand of God, the Israelites abandoned the worship of God, forgot all His mighty acts, repudiated Him, and proceeded to worship the head of the calf. After that they returned to idol-worship time and again, not just once, and offered sacrifices to those idols—not animals, but their own sons and daughters, as has already been mentioned. All of these deeds are recorded in the chronicles of the Children of Israel.

When God saw the hardness of their hearts, the stiffness of their necks, and their unbelief, and when He observed their foul and impure actions, He became angry with them, made them objects of contempt, and sealed their hearts so that they would not believe. He left them humiliated among all nations, without king, without land, without prophet, and without priest for evermore—just as the prophets had foretold, as we noted earlier—and their own scriptures, still in their possession to this very day, testify to the same.

In the same vein God said to Isaiah:

“Go to this people and say, ‘You will indeed hear, yet never understand; you will indeed look, yet never perceive. For the heart of this people has grown dull: they have listened with ears that are heavy, they have shut their eyes so that they might not see with them, and they have heard with their ears but do not grasp with their hearts, nor do they turn back to Me that I might show them mercy.’”