⁹ And the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee, and believe thee for ever. And Moses told the words of the people unto the Lord.

¹² I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.

¹³ And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;)

¹⁴ And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night.

¹⁵ Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,

¹⁶ Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness.

¹⁷ And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying,

¹⁸ The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

¹⁹ Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.

²⁰ And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word:

¹³ Furthermore the Lord spake unto me, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

¹⁴ Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven: and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they.

¹⁵ So I turned and came down from the mount, and the mount burned with fire: and the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands.

¹⁶ And I looked, and, behold, ye had sinned against the Lord your God, and had made you a molten calf: ye had turned aside quickly out of the way which the Lord had commanded you.

¹⁷ And I took the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your eyes.

¹⁸ And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins which ye sinned, in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger.

¹⁹ For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure, wherewith the Lord was wroth against you to destroy you. But the Lord hearkened unto me at that time also.

²⁰ And the Lord was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him: and I prayed for Aaron also the same time.

²¹ And I took your sin, the calf which ye had made, and burnt it with fire, and stamped it, and ground it very small, even until it was as small as dust: and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount.

²² And at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrothhattaavah, ye provoked the Lord to wrath.

²³ Likewise when the Lord sent you from Kadeshbarnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you; then ye rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and ye believed him not, nor hearkened to his voice.

²⁴ Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

²⁵ Thus I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights, as I fell down at the first; because the Lord had said he would destroy you.

²⁶ I prayed therefore unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

²⁷ Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin:

²⁸ Lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he hath brought them out to slay them in the wilderness.

²⁹ Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy mighty power and by thy stretched out arm.