The Canaanites and everyone living in the land will come and surround us and wipe us out so completely that even our name will be forgotten. Then what will happen to your great reputation?”
Why should the Egyptians be able to say, ‘He brought them out with the evil purpose of killing them in the mountains, wiping them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger. Please change your mind over the threat against your people.
But I did act so I would not be misrepresented, so that I wouldn't lose respect in the eyes of the other nations living near them who had seen me reveal myself to Israel by leading them out of Egypt.
Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar of the Temple. Let them say, “Lord, please take pity on your people, and do not let your inheritance be disgraced, ruled over by foreign nations, so that the people of these nations could ask, ‘Where is their God?’”
Then my enemies will see it and cover their faces in shame for taunting me, asking, “Where is the Lord your God?” With my own eyes I will see what happens to them; they will be trodden down like mud in the streets.
If you don't, those people back in Egypt will say, ‘The Lord brought them out to kill them in the desert because he couldn't take them to the land he'd promised them, and because he hated them.’