The LORD said to MOSES, "Behold, I come to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever." MOSES told the words of the people to The LORD.

12. I will strike them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they."

13. MOSES said to The LORD, "Then the Egyptians will hear it; for you brought up this people in your might from among them.

14. They will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you the LORD are in the middle of this people; for you the LORD are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them, and you go before them, in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night.

15. Now if you killed this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of you will speak, saying,

16. 'Because the LORD was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness.'

17. Now please let the power of the Lord be great, according as you have spoken, saying,

18. 'The LORD is slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, forgiving iniquity and disobedience; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation.'

19. Please pardon the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your loving kindness, and according as you have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now."

20. The LORD said, "I have pardoned according to your word:

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."