Moses pressed further. How will it be known, he asked, that Israel has truly found favor before God?
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, gives his answer a rabbinic sharpness. "In what will it be known that I have found mercy before You, but in the converse of Your Shekhinah with us, that distinguishing signs may be wrought for us, in the minia d'ruach nevu'ah, the withholdment of the Spirit of prophecy from the nations, and by Your speaking by the Holy Spirit to me and to Your people, that we may be distinguished from all the peoples upon the face of the earth?" (Exodus 33:16).
This verse is the Targum's theological rocket. Moses is not asking for blessings, land, or wealth. He is asking for prophecy. The real mark of covenant, he says, is that God speaks to Israel and withholds that same voice from every other nation on earth. The Targum names the mechanism out loud - ruach nevu'ah, the spirit of prophecy, restricted to Israel as a sign of chosenness.
After the Second Temple fell, the rabbis would argue about whether prophecy had ceased. But here, at Sinai's aftermath, Moses is establishing the principle. Our distinction is not military. It is not economic. It is the voice. As long as God speaks to us and only to us in this particular mode, we are His.
Takeaway: What makes a people sacred is not how loudly they speak about God. It is whether God still speaks to them. The conversation is the covenant.