For how would it be known that I or your people have found favor in Your sight? Isn’t it because You go with us, that distinguishes us from all the people on the face of the earth?”
What one nation on earth is like Your people, like Israel, whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people, to make for Himself a Name, to do for You a great thing and awesome deeds for Your land, before Your people whom You redeemed for Yourself from Egypt—driving out nations and their gods?
For You have set them apart from among all the peoples of the earth to be Your inheritance, as You spoke by the hand of Moses Your servant, when You brought our fathers out of Egypt, my Lord Adonai.”
Then He said, “I am cutting a covenant. Before all your people I will do wonders, such as have not been done in all the earth, or in any nation. All the people you are among will see the work of Adonai—for what I am going to do with you will be awesome!
He said, “If now I have found grace in Your eyes, my Lord, let my Lord please go within our midst, even though this is a stiff-necked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own inheritance.”
But Moses said, “That would not be right. For the offerings we intend to sacrifice to Adonai our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice what is an abomination to the Egyptians, wouldn’t they stone us?
But I have said to you, ‘You will inherit their land and I will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am Adonai your God, who has set you apart from the peoples.
They will tell the residents of this land about it. Already they have heard that You, Adonai, are in the midst of this people, that You, Adonai, have been seen eye to eye, that Your cloud remains over them, and that in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night You go before them.
From the rocky peaks I see him. From the heights I behold him. Look, he lives as a nation apart, and does not consider himself as being like the other nations.
Or has any god ever tried to come to take for himself a nation from within a nation—by trials, by signs and wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors—like all that Adonai your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?