If now you slay this people all at once, the nations who have heard such reports of you will say,
Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent he brought them out, that he might kill them in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning wrath; change your mind about punishing your people.
‘The Lord was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them; that is why he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’
The Lord said to him: I will be with you, and you will cut down Midian to the last man.