18. “Then, as before, I threw myself down before the lord for forty days and nights. I ate no bread and drank no water because of the great sin you had committed by doing what the lord hated, provoking him to anger.
19. I feared that the furious anger of the lord, which turned him against you, would drive him to destroy you. But again he listened to me.
20. The lord was so angry with Aaron that he wanted to destroy him, too. But I prayed for Aaron, and the lord spared him.
21. I took your sin—the calf you had made—and I melted it down in the fire and ground it into fine dust. Then I threw the dust into the stream that flows down the mountain.
22. “You also made the lord angry at Taberah, Massah, and Kibroth-hattaavah.
23. And at Kadesh-barnea the lord sent you out with this command: ‘Go up and take over the land I have given you.’ But you rebelled against the command of the lord your God and refused to put your trust in him or obey him.
24. Yes, you have been rebelling against the lord as long as I have known you.
25. “That is why I threw myself down before the lord for forty days and nights—for the lord said he would destroy you.
26. I prayed to the lord and said, ‘O Sovereign lord, do not destroy them. They are your own people. They are your special possession, whom you redeemed from Egypt by your mighty power and your strong hand.
27. Please overlook the stubbornness and the awful sin of these people, and remember instead your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
28. If you destroy these people, the Egyptians will say, “The Israelites died because the lord wasn’t able to bring them to the land he had promised to give them.” Or they might say, “He destroyed them because he hated them; he deliberately took them into the wilderness to slaughter them.”
29. But they are your people and your special possession, whom you brought out of Egypt by your great strength and powerful arm.’