to a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up among you, for you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way."

He said, "If now I have found favor in your sight, Lord, please let the Lord go among us; although this is a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance."

12. The LORD said to me, "Arise, get down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves!"

13. Furthermore the LORD spoke to me, saying, "I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.

14. Leave me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under the sky; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they."

15. So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. The two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

16. I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the LORD your God. You had made yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly out of the way which the LORD had commanded you.

17. I took hold of the two tablets, and threw them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.

18. I fell down before The LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you sinned, in doing that which was evil in The LORD's sight, to provoke him to anger.

19. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the LORD was angry against you to destroy you. But the LORD listened to me that time also.

20. The LORD was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. I prayed for Aaron also at the same time.

21. I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire, and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. I threw its dust into the brook that descended out of the mountain.

22. At Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth Hattaavah, you provoked the LORD to wrath.

23. When the LORD sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, "Go up and possess the land which I have given you," you rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God, and you didn't believe him, nor listen to his voice.

24. You have been rebellious against the LORD from the day that I knew you.

25. So I fell down before the LORD the forty days and forty nights that I fell down, because the LORD had said he would destroy you.

26. I prayed to The LORD, and said, "Lord God, don't destroy your people and your inheritance, that you have redeemed through your greatness, that you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

27. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don't look at the stubbornness of this people, nor at their wickedness, nor at their sin,

28. lest the land you brought us out from say, 'Because the LORD was not able to bring them into the land which he promised to them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness.'

29. Yet they are your people and your inheritance, which you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm."