Moses's prayer of intercession now turned to a second argument — one so brilliant the sages would study it for centuries. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves its form: Why should the Mizraee who are remaining say, It was for evil that He led them out, to kill them among the mountains of Tabor and Hermon, and Sirion and Sinai, and to destroy them from the face of the earth? (Exodus 32:12).
What was Moses really arguing?
The classical midrashic tradition (Berakhot 32a, c. 500 CE) saw this as the hutzpah — the audacity — of Moses's prayer. He was not pleading on Israel's merits. He had none to plead. Instead, he was pleading on God's reputation. If God destroyed Israel in the mountains between Egypt and the Promised Land, the Egyptians who had survived the Sea of Reeds would interpret the disaster as proof that the God of Israel was either weak or cruel — weak if he could not complete the rescue, cruel if he had staged the Exodus only as an elaborate execution.
Moses was, in essence, telling God: You cannot afford to destroy them. Your name cannot afford it. The world is watching.
The targum names the specific mountains — Tabor, Hermon, Sirion, Sinai — the four peaks of the region where the Egyptians would imagine the slaughter. Each is named precisely because the midrashic tradition (Tanchuma Ki Tisa 22) taught that each of these mountains had, at Sinai, offered itself as the site of the revelation. Moses was saying: would you now turn the mountains that sought the Torah into mass graves of the people who received it?
The conclusion is the stunning request: Turn from Thy strong anger, and let there be relenting before Thee over the evil that Thou hast threatened to do unto Thy people. The word relenting is nichum — a change of heart. Moses was asking God to turn. And in the verses to come, God does.
The Maggid takes this home: sometimes the most powerful prayer is the one that appeals to the Other's stake, not to your own merit. Show God what God has invested, and the wrath may become relenting.