¹³ Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them.^{(A) 14} And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard^(B) that you, Lord, are with these people^(C) and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face,^(D) that your cloud stays over them,^(E) and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.^{(F) 15} If you put all these people to death, leaving none alive, the nations who have heard this report about you will say, ¹⁶ ‘The Lord was not able to bring these people into the land he promised them on oath,^(G) so he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’^(H)

¹⁷ “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ¹⁸ ‘The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.^(I) Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’^{(J) 19} In accordance with your great love, forgive^(K) the sin of these people,^(L) just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”^(M)

²⁰ The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them,^(N) as you asked.

²² For the sake^(A) of his great name^(B) the Lord will not reject^(C) his people, because the Lord was pleased to make^(D) you his own.

¹⁴ But for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned^(A) in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.^{(B) 15} Also with uplifted hand I swore^(C) to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land I had given them—a land flowing with milk and honey, the most beautiful of all lands^(D)— ¹⁶ because they rejected my laws^(E) and did not follow my decrees and desecrated my Sabbaths. For their hearts^(F) were devoted to their idols.^{(G) 17} Yet I looked on them with pity and did not destroy^(H) them or put an end to them in the wilderness.