For you know—and know well—the sacred Scriptures, beloved, and you have studied the oracles of God. Therefore we write these things as a reminder.
For when Moses went up the mountain and spent forty days and forty nights in fasting and humility, God said to him: “Go down quickly from here, because your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted lawlessly. They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them and have made cast images for themselves.”
And the Lord said to him: “I have spoken to you once and twice, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, they are stiff-necked. Let Me destroy them, and I will wipe out their name from under heaven, and I will make you into a nation great and marvelous, far greater than this one.’”
And Moses said: “By no means, Lord! Forgive the sin of this people, or blot me also out of the book of the living.”
O great love! O unsurpassable perfection! A servant speaks boldly to the Lord; he asks forgiveness for the multitude, or else asks that he himself be blotted out with them.