Then I lay prostrate before the LORD as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the LORD to provoke him to anger.
18. And I fell down before the Lord The order of the narrative is confused; for this fact of which he speaks did not precede his second ascent into the mount, when he was commanded to prepare the second tables.
That they might have no pretence to think that God brought them to Canaan for their righteousness, Moses here shows them what a miracle of mercy it was that they had not long ere this been destroyed in the wilderness: "Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the Lord thy God (Deu 9:7); so far from purchasing his favour, thou hast many a time laid...
Commenting on Deuteronomy 9:7-29
And I fell down before the Lord,.... In prayer for Israel who had sinned; but this he did not immediately after he had broken the tables, but when he had first ground the calf to powder, strewed it on the water, and made the children of Israel drink it; and when he had chided Aaron, and ordered the sons of Levi to slay every man...