Deuteronomy 9:25

"So I fell down before Jehovah the forty days and forty nights, because Jehovah had said he would destroy you. And I prayed unto Jehovah, and said, O Lord Jehovah, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, that thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, that thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin, lest the land whence thou broughtest us out say, Because Jehovah was not able to bring them into the land which he promised unto them, and because he hated them, he hath brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest out by thy great power and by thine outstretched arm."

God credited Moses with having brought Israel out of Egypt in Deuteronomy 9:12, but in these verses, Moses repeatedly emphasized the truth that it was God Himself who did so. Moses pleaded the promises to the Patriarchs, and in this we see the explanation of many things in the history of Israel. There must have been countless times when God would have wiped Israel off the face of the earth except for those promises! You see, God had promised that through the posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Messiah would at last be born, and we must say it reverently, "God was simply stuck with Israel, until that event occurred." That truth becomes apparent here. Not only so, but when Israel actually became worse, yes, that is the word, WORSE than Sodom and Gomorrah (See Ezekiel 16), justice would have required the annihilation of Israel, just as Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed, but then there were those promises. Since the salvation of all mankind depended on the birth of the Messiah, God continued to put up with Israel until Jesus was born.

"In all of the actions Moses mentioned here, it is not always easy to tell which occurred in one stay in the mountain, or in the other."[28] As it pertained to the purpose of Moses in recounting all this, it did not make the slightest difference. "The arrangement here, as frequently found in Hebrew narrative, subordinates strict chronological sequence to topical interests."[29]