Moses Talks to Enki

^1-3 Enki said to Moses:

Enki

Go with your people to the land which I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I will send an agent before you to a land flowing with milk and honey. I will drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

I will not go with you because you are a stiffnecked people and I might destroy you along the way.

⁴ When the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did put on him his ornaments.

⁵ Enki said to Moses:

Enki

Say to the Israelites: ‘Your are a stiffnecked people. I will come up and destroy you. So remove your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.

⁶ So the Israelites stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.

⁷ Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it far from the camp, and called it the Tabernacle of the congregation.

Every one which sought Enki went out to the tabernacle of the congregation outside the camp.

⁸ When Moses went out to the tabernacle, all the people rose up, and stood every man [at] his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he was gone into the tabernacle.

⁹ As Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended, and stood [at] the door of the tabernacle, and Enki talked with Moses.

¹⁰ All the people saw the cloudy pillar stand [at] the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man [in] his tent door.

¹¹ Enki spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

He turned again into the camp. But his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of the tabernacle.

Moses

¹² [To Enki] You tell me to bring up this people: and you hast not let me know whom you wilt send with me. Yet you hast said, I know you by name, and you hast also found grace in my sight.

¹³ Please show me your way so that I may find grace in your sight. Please see this nation as your people.

Enki

¹⁴ My presence shall go with you and I will give you rest.

Moses

¹⁵ If you do not go with me, then do not let us go. {33:16} For wherein shall it be known here that I and your people have found grace in your sight? [is it] not in that you goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and your people, from all the people that [are] upon the face of the earth.

Enki

¹⁷ I will do this thing also that you has spoken. You have found grace in my sight, and I know you by name.

Moses

¹⁸ Please, show me your glory.

Enki

¹⁹ I will make all my goodness pass before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will shew mercy. ²⁰ You cannot see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

²¹ There is a place by me. You shall stand on a rock. ²² While my glory passes by, I will put you in a cliff of the rock, and cover you with my hand while I pass by.

²³ I will take away my hand and you shall see my back parts but not my face.