When Moses returned up Sinai to pray, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives us the opening words of his plea, and they are unlike any prayer that came before.
"I supplicate of Thee, Thou Lord of all the world, before whom the darkness is as the light! Now have this people sinned a great sin, and have made to them gods of gold" (Exodus 32:31).
The Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah inserts a theological flourish the plain verse does not have. Moses addresses God as the One before whom chashokha kenehora, the darkness is as the light. He is not trying to hide the sin. He is acknowledging that hiding is impossible. God sees the molten gold and the dancing and the marks on the nostrils with the same clarity with which He sees the faithful.
This is the rhetorical move of a master advocate. Moses is saying, "I know You already know. I am not coming here to minimize. I am coming here because You, who see everything, also have the power to forgive everything."
Then comes the brutal concession. "They have made gods of gold." No euphemism. No "children of the just." Just the sin, named for what it was, laid before the One who already saw it happen.
Takeaway: Real prayer begins with the admission that God already sees. Nothing we say in the tent of meeting is news to Heaven. What matters is that we showed up to say it.