^{16 Ref} And I saw that you had done evil against the Lord, and had made for yourselves a metal image of a young ox: you had quickly been turned from the way in which the Lord had given you orders to go.

¹⁷ And I let the stones go from my hands, and they were broken before your eyes.

^{18 Ref} And I went down on my face before the Lord, as at the first, for forty days and forty nights, without taking food or drinking water, because of all your sin, in doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and moving him to wrath.

^{19 Ref} For I was full of fear because of the wrath of the Lord which was burning against you, with your destruction in view. But again the Lord's ear was open to my prayer.

^{20 Ref} And the Lord, in his wrath, would have put Aaron to death: and I made prayer for Aaron at the same time.

^{21 Ref} And I took your sin, the image which you had made, and put it in the fire and had it hammered and crushed very small till it was only dust: and the dust I put in the stream flowing down from the mountain.

^{22 Ref} Again at Taberah and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you made the Lord angry.

^{23 Ref} And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, Go up and take the land which I have given you; you went against the orders of the Lord your God, and had no faith in him, and would not give ear to his voice.

^{24 Ref} From the day when I first had knowledge of you, you have gone against the word of the Lord.

^{25 Ref} So I went down on my face in prayer before the Lord for forty days and forty nights as I did at first; because the Lord had said that he would put an end to you.

^{26 Ref} And I made prayer to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not send destruction on your people and your heritage, to whom, by your great power, you have given salvation, whom you have taken out of Egypt by the strength of your hand.

^{27 Ref} Keep in mind your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not looking at the hard heart of this people, or their evil-doing and their sin:

^{28 Ref} Or it may be said in the land from which you have taken them, Because the Lord was not able to take them into the land which he said he would give them, and because of his hate for them, he has taken them out to put them to death in the waste land.

^{29 Ref} But still they are your people and your heritage, whom you took out by your great power and by your stretched-out arm.