1 Clement 53

1For you know the holy Scriptures—and know them well, beloved—and you have pored over the oracles of God. Therefore we write these things for your remembrance.

2For when Moses had gone up the mountain and had spent forty days and forty nights in fasting and self-abasement, God said to him, “Moses, Moses, come 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 that I commanded them; they have made molten images for themselves.”

3And 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. Leave me alone to destroy them, and I will blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make you into a nation great and marvelous and greater than this one.’”

4And Moses said, "If you will forgive their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me also out of the book of the living."

5O great love! O unsurpassable perfection! A servant speaks boldly to his Lord, asks forgiveness for the multitude, or even asks to be blotted out with them.