23When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. 24And when he saw one of them being mistreated, Moses went to his defense and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian who was oppressing him. 25He assumed his brothers would understand that God was using him to deliver them, but they did not. 26The next day he came upon two Israelites who were fighting, and he tried to reconcile them, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?’ 27But the man who was abusing his neighbor pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29At this remark, Moses fled to the land of Midian, where he lived as a foreigner and had two sons. 30After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. 31When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight. As he approached to look more closely, the voice of the Lord came to him: 32‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. 33Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have indeed seen the oppression of My people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to deliver them. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt.’ 35This Moses, whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ is the one whom God sent to be their ruler and redeemer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out and performed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and for forty years in the wilderness. 37This is the same Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers.’ 38He was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. And he received living words to pass on to us. 39But our fathers refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40They said to Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us! As for this Moses who led us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ 41At that time they made a calf and offered a sacrifice to the idol, rejoicing in the works of their hands. 42But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 43You have taken along the tabernacle of Molech and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Babylon.’ 44Our fathers had the tabernacle of the Testimony with them in the wilderness. It was constructed exactly as God had directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. 45And our fathers who received it brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations God drove out before them. It remained until the time of David, 46who found favor in the sight of God and asked to provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47But it was Solomon who built the house for Him. 48However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says: 49‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. What kind of house will you build for Me, says the Lord, or where will My place of repose be? 50Has not My hand made all these things?’