¹¹ The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt?^(A) How long will they refuse to believe in me,^(B) in spite of all the signs^(C) I have performed among them? ¹² I will strike them down with a plague^(D) and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation^(E) greater and stronger than they.”^(F)

¹³ Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear about it! By your power you brought these people up from among them.^{(G) 14} And they will tell the inhabitants of this land about it. They have already heard^(H) that you, Lord, are with these people^(I) and that you, Lord, have been seen face to face,^(J) that your cloud stays over them,^(K) and that you go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.^{(L) 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,^(M) so he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’^(N)

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.^(O) Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’^{(P) 19} In accordance with your great love, forgive^(Q) the sin of these people,^(R) just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”^(S)

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

¹³ “‘Yet the people of Israel rebelled^(A) against me in the wilderness. They did not follow my decrees but rejected my laws^(B)—by which the person who obeys them will live—and they utterly desecrated my Sabbaths.^(C) So I said I would pour out my wrath^(D) on them and destroy^(E) them in the wilderness.^(F)

¹⁷ Yet I looked on them with pity and did not destroy^(A) them or put an end to them in the wilderness.

²¹ “‘But the children rebelled against me: They did not follow my decrees, they were not careful to keep my laws,^(A) of which I said, “The person who obeys them will live by them,” and they desecrated my Sabbaths. So I said I would pour out my wrath on them and spend my anger^(B) against them in the wilderness.^{(C) 22} But I withheld^(D) my hand, and for the sake of my name^(E) I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.