23. Then the Lord sent you away from Kadesh Barnea and said, “Go up and take the land I have given you.” But you rejected the command of the Lord your God. You did not trust him or obey him.
24. You have refused to obey the Lord as long as I have known you.
25. The Lord had said he would destroy you, so I threw myself down in front of him for those forty days and forty nights.
26. I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy your people, your own people, whom you freed and brought out of Egypt by your great power and strength.
27. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Don’t look at how stubborn these people are, and don’t look at their sin and evil.
28. Otherwise, Egypt will say, ‘It was because the Lord was not able to take his people into the land he promised them, and it was because he hated them that he took them into the desert to kill them.’
29. But they are your people, Lord, your own people, whom you brought out of Egypt with your great power and strength.”