Now if thou dost kill this people as one man, then the nations who have heard thy fame will say,
Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
‘Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore to give to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness.’
And the Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall smite the Midianites as one man.”