Neither become idolaters, as some of them did; just as it is written: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and they got up to have a good time.’

Earlier, while Moses was receiving the Law on Mount Sinai, the Israelites became “idolaters,” as Paul mentions. They engaged in calf worship and gave way to sensual pleasures. Why? The absence of their visible leader was the circumstance that gave rise to the temptation, for they said to Aaron: “Get up, make for us a god who will go ahead of us, because as regards this Moses, the man who led us up out of the land of Egypt, we certainly do not know what has happened to him.”​—Ex. 32:1, 6.