For when Moses had gone up into the mountain and had spent forty days and forty nights in fasting and humiliation, God said to him: "Go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have acted lawlessly; they have quickly turned aside from the way which you commanded them, and have made for themselves molten images."
And the Lord said to him: "I have spoken to you once and twice, saying: I have seen this people, and behold, it is stiff-necked. Let me destroy them, and I will blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation great and wonderful and far greater than this."
O great love! O perfection unsurpassed! The servant speaks boldly to the Lord; he asks forgiveness for the multitude, or else he deems it fitting that he himself be blotted out together with them.