After hearing the Thirteen Attributes, Moses pressed his petition one more time. The words he spoke contain the deepest prayer of Jewish survival.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, preserves it. "If now I have found mercy before the Lord, let the Shekhinah of the Glory of the Lord go among us; for it is a people of hard neck. But pardon our guilt and our sin, and give us the inheritance of the land which You did covenant unto our fathers, and la tachalfinana l'am nukhrai, change us not to become an alien people" (Exodus 34:9).
The last clause is stunning. Moses is afraid of two things. The first is that Israel might be destroyed. The second, worse, is that Israel might be swapped. That God might say, "I will keep My promise, but I will transfer My covenant to a different people. Your seed will be replaced." Moses begs against the substitution more than against the destruction.
The Targum makes explicit what the Hebrew hints at. "Do not change us into another nation." Keep us Israel. Keep the identity we have been building since Abraham. If we must be punished, punish. But do not break the chain by making some other people into the chosen ones.
Every Jew who has ever prayed for continuity, for children who remain in the covenant, is echoing this verse.
Takeaway: The deepest Jewish fear is not death. It is replacement. And the deepest Jewish prayer is that God keep us, with all our stubbornness, as the people of the covenant.