Moses' next request is the oldest and most painful question in religious life. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, renders it with full theological weight.
"If I have found mercy before You, make me to know the way of Your goodness, to understand Your mercy - when in Your dealing with just men it befalls them as it befalls the guilty, and to the guilty as to the just; but, on the contrary how it indeed befalls the just according to their righteousness and the guilty according to their guilt: that I may find mercy before You, and it be made manifest by You that this people is Your people" (Exodus 33:13).
Read that slowly. Moses is asking about tzaddik ve-ra lo, rasha ve-tov lo - why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. He is asking the question of Job before Job is born. He is asking the question every grieving parent has asked at every grave.
The Targum does not provide a tidy answer. It records the question. And it frames Moses' request as an act of intercession. He is not only asking for his own understanding. He is asking as the advocate of Israel. If God can show him how divine justice actually operates, Moses can carry that knowledge back to a people still reeling from the calf, still bleeding from the sword of the Levites.
The deepest prayer is the one that asks for understanding we know may never fully come. And still we ask.
Takeaway: The righteous do not get spared suffering. The question of why, carried to God in prayer, is one of the oldest forms of faith.