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53:1 Ye know, beloved, and know well, the sacred scriptures, and have looked
into the oracles of God; call, therefore, these things to remembrance.
53:2 For, when Moses had gone up into the mount, and had tarried there forty
days and forty nights in fasting and humiliation, the Lord said unto him, Moses,
Moses, get thee down quickly hence, for thy people, whom thou broughtest out of
the land of Egypt, have wrought iniquity. They have gone astray quickly out of
the way that thou commandest them, and have made unto themselves molten images.
53:3 And the Lord said unto him, I have spoken unto thee once and twice,
saying, I have beheld this people, and, lo, it is a stiffnecked people.
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Let me
alone, that I may destroy them, and I will wipe out their name from under
heaven, and make of thee a nation great and wonderful, and far more numerous
than they.
53:4 And Moses said, Be it far from thee, O Lord. Forgive this people their
sin, or wipe my name also out of the book of the living.
53:5 Oh, the great love!
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Oh, the unsurpassable perfection! The servant is
bold towards the Lord: he asketh remission for the people, or demands otherwise
that he himself should be destroyed together with them.