The great intercessor did not rise to his prayer from confidence. He rose from terror. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the detail the Hebrew leaves out: Moses was shaken with fear, and began to pray before the Lord his God (Exodus 32:11).
Why begin the story of Moses's prayer with his trembling?
The sages noticed that almost every great moment of Jewish intercession begins this way. Abraham, pleading for Sodom, says I am but dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27). King David, interceding after his census, falls on his face (2 Samuel 24:17). Esther, about to confront King Ahasuerus for her people, fasts three days in dread (Esther 4:16). Fear is the mother of every real prayer. Calm, self-assured petition is often the prayer of someone who does not fully believe the stakes.
Moses understood what was on the line. The people he had led out of Egypt were about to be consumed. The covenant with the patriarchs was about to be voided. The name of God was about to be mocked in Egypt and Canaan. And Moses was being offered a personal promotion at the cost of his nation.
The targum's phrasing is careful. Moses did not argue. He did not rebuke. He began by asking a question — Wherefore should Thy wrath, O Lord, prevail against Thy people whom Thou didst bring up from the land of Mizraim, with great power and with a mighty hand?. Notice the pronoun shift. God had called Israel thy people, handing them off to Moses. Moses immediately called them Thy people, handing them back. The whole theological battle of the verse is in that one possessive.
The sages saw in this the art of Jewish intercession. You do not tell God God is wrong. You remind God of God's own investment. You invoke God's own stake. You make God's history with you the argument for God's future with you.
The Maggid takes this home: pray shaken. Pray afraid. Pray with the knowledge that something real is at stake, and the covenant will meet you in the trembling.