11. The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to trust me in spite of all the miraculous signs I have done among them?
12. I’ll strike them with a plague, I’ll destroy them, and I’ll make you into a nation larger and stronger than they are.”
13. But Moses said to the Lord, “What if the Egyptians hear about it? (You used your power to take these people away from them.)
14. What if the Egyptians tell the people who live in this land? Lord, they have already heard that you are with these people, that they have seen you with their own eyes, that your column of smoke stays over them, and that you go ahead of them in a column of smoke by day and in a column of fire by night.
15. But if you kill all these people at the same time, then the nations who have heard these reports about you will say,
16. ‘The Lord wasn’t able to bring these people into the land he promised them, so he slaughtered them in the desert.’
17. “Lord, let your power be as great as when you said,
18. ‘The Lord. . . patient, forever loving. . . . He forgives wrongdoing and disobedience. . . . He never lets the guilty go unpunished, punishing children. . . for their parents’ sins to the third and fourth generation. . . .’