I will strike them with a plague and destroy them—and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they are." But Moses said to the LORD, "The Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought this people from among them. And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have already heard that You, O LORD, are in the midst of this people, that You, O LORD, have been seen face to face, that Your cloud stands over them, and that You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. If You kill this people as one man, the nations who have heard of Your fame will say, 'Because the LORD was unable to bring this people into the land He swore to give them, He has slaughtered them in the wilderness.' So now I pray, may the power of my Lord be magnified, just as You have declared: 'The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in loving devotion, forgiving iniquity and transgression. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation.' Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people, in keeping with the greatness of Your loving devotion, just as You have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt."
Now leave Me alone, so that My anger may burn against them and consume them. Then I will make you into a great nation." But Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God, saying, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people, whom You brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians declare, 'He brought them out with evil intent, to kill them in the mountains and wipe them from the face of the earth'? Turn from Your fierce anger and relent from doing harm to Your people. Remember Your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom You swore by Your very self when You declared, 'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all this land that I have promised, and it shall be their inheritance forever.'"
Significance
Numbers 14:12-19 replays the intercession pattern of Exodus 32:10-13 with remarkable structural precision. In both: (1) God threatens to destroy Israel and make Moses a great nation, (2) Moses refuses the offer, (3) Moses appeals to what the nations will say about God's reputation, and (4) Moses invokes God's covenant promises. Numbers 14:18 even quotes the divine self-revelation from Exodus 34:6-7 ("slow to anger and abounding in loving devotion"), which was itself the result of the first intercession at Sinai. This repeated pattern establishes Mosaic mediation as a fixed feature of Israel's covenant relationship, where one man stands in the breach (cf. Ps 106:23) to avert corporate destruction.
