Now if I have indeed found favour with you, please teach me your ways, and I will know you, so that I may find favour with you. Now consider that this nation is your people.’
I prayed to the Lord: Lord God, do not annihilate your people, your inheritance, whom you redeemed through your greatness and brought out of Egypt with a strong hand.
Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the portico and the altar. Let them say, ‘Have pity on your people, Lord, and do not make your inheritance a disgrace, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, “Where is their God? ” ’
Then he said, ‘My Lord, if I have indeed found favour with you, my Lord, please go with us (even though this is a stiff-necked people), forgive our iniquity and our sin, and accept us as your own possession.’
Why, Lord, do you make us stray from your ways? You harden our hearts so that we do not fear you. Return, because of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.
Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings,
Later, Moses and Aaron went in and said to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival for me in the wilderness.’
Why should the Egyptians say, “He brought them out with an evil intent to kill them in the mountains and eliminate them from the face of the earth”? Turn from your fierce anger and relent concerning this disaster planned for your people.
Then the king instructed Zadok, ‘Return the ark of God to the city. If I find favour with the Lord, he will bring me back and allow me to see both it and its dwelling place.