21. As for your sinful thing that you had made, the calf, I took it, melted it down, ground it up until it was as fine as dust, and tossed the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.
22. Moreover, you continued to provoke the Lord at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth-Hattaavah.
23. And when he sent you from Kadesh-Barnea and told you, “Go up and possess the land I have given you,” you rebelled against the Lord your God and would neither believe nor obey him.
24. You have been rebelling against him from the very first day I knew you!
25. I lay flat on the ground before the Lord for forty days and nights, for he had said he would destroy you.
26. I prayed to him: O, Lord God, do not destroy your people, your valued property that you have powerfully redeemed, whom you brought out of Egypt by your strength.
27. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; ignore the stubbornness, wickedness, and sin of these people.
28. Otherwise the people of the land from which you brought us will say, “The Lord was unable to bring them to the land he promised them, and because of his hatred for them he has brought them out to kill them in the desert.”
29. They are your people, your valued property, whom you brought out with great strength and power.