¹⁸ Then once again I fell^(A) prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water,^(B) because of all the sin you had committed,^(C) doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger.

²⁸ Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights^(A) without eating bread or drinking water.^(B) And he wrote on the tablets^(C) the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.^(D)

⁹ When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant^(A) that the Lord had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days^(B) and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water.^(C)

¹⁶ David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying^(A) in sackcloth^[a] on the ground.

¹⁰ Now I had stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, as I did the first time, and the Lord listened to me at this time also. It was not his will to destroy you.^(A)

¹⁰ Now leave me alone^(A) so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy^(B) them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”^(C)

¹¹ But Moses sought the favor^(D) of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand?^{(E) 12} Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’?^(F) Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster^(G) on your people. ¹³ Remember^(H) your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self:^(I) ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars^(J) in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land^(K) I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” ¹⁴ Then the Lord relented^(L) and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.