Prayer is a way that we make an appeal to the Lord. Does He hear us? And how would we know? Maybe we use our experience in making appeals to other people as a guide to what will happen when we ask God for something we desperately need. This part of the story shows that assuming people respond to appeals like the Lord responds would be a mistake. Moses asks Israel to reconsider their rebellion in fear, but Israel refuses to turn away. That causes Moses to make an appeal to God. It doesn’t mean that Moses was foolish to ask the Israelites to change their minds, even though they didn’t. Likewise, we learn that asking God to turn away from what is fair, and to show mercy and grace instead is not a wasted effort. We make appeals to both people and to the Lord. From what we read here, let’s be good at doing both.