Exodus 17:1

Exodus 17 opens right after the manna and quail of Exodus 16, which God gave in the wilderness of Sin. Now the whole congregation moves on. The verb for “journeyed”, nâsaʿ, means to pull up the tent pegs and set out, and “after their journeys” describes travel in stages, from one camp to the next. Every stage was taken “according to the commandment of the LORD”. The word for commandment there is peh, “mouth”, so Israel moved at the word from the LORD’s own mouth. Numbers describes the cloud over the tabernacle by which the LORD told them when to set out and when to camp (Numbers 9:15–23).

That makes the end of the verse striking. They pitched in Rephidim, “and there was no water for the people to drink”. The word for water, mayim, is the ordinary word, and in the desert its absence meant death for a great company of men, women, children and livestock. The LORD had led them to this place, so the lack of water at Rephidim was part of his plan. Moses later tells Israel why God led them through the wilderness: to humble them, to test them, to show what was in their hearts, and to teach them that their lives depended on him (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). Rephidim was one of those lessons. The name Rephidim is linked with words meaning supports or rests, which makes it an ironic place to find nothing to drink.

“Wherefore the people did chide with Moses.” To chide, rîyb, means to quarrel, contend or accuse, and the same verb can also mean to plead someone’s cause. Here it is an angry quarrel. Their words, “Give us water that we may drink”, are a demand made of Moses, as if he could bring water out of the ground himself. Their thirst was real and life-threatening, and a leader in that world was expected to provide for his people. Yet they turned on the man they could see and left out the God who had led them there.

Moses answers with two questions: “Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD?” He knows he is the LORD’s servant, so a quarrel with him is a quarrel with the one who sent him. To tempt, nâçâh, means to test or put to the proof. When people test God, they doubt his power, his presence or his faithfulness and demand that he prove himself on their terms. Their thinking amounted to “If God is truly with us, let him give us water”, and verse 7 puts their question into words. The one they were testing is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, God’s covenant name, tied to the Hebrew verb “to be” and speaking of his eternal, unchanging faithfulness. This was the God who had just brought them out of Egypt and through the sea (Exodus 14).

The law later forbids this sin by name: “Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah” (Deuteronomy 6:16). A psalm remembers how Israel “tempted God in their heart” and asked, “Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?” (Psalm 78:18–20), and the LORD himself later says that the people had tempted him ten times (Numbers 14:22). Testing God is the opposite of a humble, expectant faith that brings its need to him and waits on him.

Verse 3 shows how far the quarrel went. “The people thirsted there for water.” The verb tsâmêʼ means to thirst, and it can be used of the body or of the soul. Then “the people murmured against Moses”. The verb lûwn first means to stop or stay overnight, and in a bad sense it means to grumble. It is used again and again in the books of Moses for Israel’s complaining in the wilderness, and Moses had already told them, when the manna came, whose ears their complaints reached: “your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD” (Exodus 16:8).

Their question, “Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?”, is an accusation. The verb mûwth means to die, and here it means “to kill”, so they charge Moses, and through him the LORD, with bringing them out of slavery only to let them die in the desert. Naming their children and their cattle shows how complete they felt the danger to be. It also shows how short their memory was. They had seen the plagues on Egypt (Exodus 7:14–12:30), walked through the sea and gathered manna day by day. At the Red Sea they had already asked whether Moses had brought them out to die in the wilderness (Exodus 14:11–12).

The complaint at Rephidim is one link in a chain. At Marah they murmured over bitter water, and God made it sweet (Exodus 15:23–25). In the wilderness of Sin they murmured for food, and he gave manna and quail. Later they would crave meat (Numbers 11:4–6) and, after the spies’ report, rebel and talk of going back to Egypt (Numbers 14:1–12). Life in the wilderness stripped away every security they had known, and when the water ran out, fear for their lives crowded out the memory of God’s faithfulness. Paul holds up Israel’s complaining in the wilderness as a warning to the church (1 Corinthians 10:9–10), and he describes the way of trust in one line: “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Moses takes the crisis to God. “Moses cried unto the LORD.” The verb tsâʻaq means to cry out or call for help in hardship. Israel had cried out under its bondage in Egypt (Exodus 2:23), and now their leader cries out because of them. His question, “What shall I do unto this people?”, uses ʻâsâh, the broadest Hebrew verb for doing or making. Moses is at the end of his own resources, and he places the whole matter before the LORD.

“They be almost ready to stone me.” The Hebrew says, in effect, “yet a little, and they will stone me”, with mᵉʻaṭ, “a little”, behind “almost”. The verb çâqal comes from the idea of weight and is used only for stoning. Stoning was a public way of putting someone to death, and Israel’s law would later appoint it for grave crimes such as blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16) and enticing others to serve other gods (Deuteronomy 13:10). The danger was real, and the people were close to violence against the man God had sent to lead them.

This is one of the times Moses stands between God and an angry people. After the golden calf he pleaded for Israel, and the LORD turned from the harm he had spoken of (Exodus 32:11–14).

The LORD answers Moses’ cry with commands. “Go on before the people” sends the man who feared stoning out in front of the very crowd, leading in full view of them. “And take with thee of the elders of Israel.” The elders, zəqēnîm, are the older men of the people, its respected leaders, and here they come as witnesses. Their witness meant that the whole congregation could know the water came from God, and it confirmed Moses’ commission from God before them all.

“And thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand.” The rod, maṭṭeh, is a staff or branch, and the word can also mean a tribe or picture whatever supports life, such as bread. God had made this rod a sign at the burning bush, when it became a serpent (Exodus 4:2–4), in the same meeting where he sent Moses to bring Israel out (Exodus 3:10). “Smotest” is nâkâh, the usual verb for striking, lightly or severely, and the river is the Nile, struck in the first plague so that its waters turned to blood (Exodus 7:20). The same rod that struck Egypt’s river in judgment now strikes a rock to give Israel water. All the power was the LORD’s, and the rod was the means he chose to show it.

“And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah.” Moses names the place after what happened there, so the names themselves become a memorial. Massah means testing and Meribah means strife or quarrelling, and the verse gives the reason for each. Meribah answers to “the chiding of the children of Israel”, where the noun is rîyb, a contest or dispute, spelled the same as the verb “chide” in verse 2. Massah answers to “they tempted the LORD”, the same verb nâçâh that Moses used in his question in verse 2.

The verse then gives the words of the testing: “Is the LORD among us, or not?” Behind “among” is qereb, the inner part or midst, so they were asking whether the LORD was really in the middle of their camp. The pillar of cloud and fire went before them, they gathered manna daily, and in verse 6 the LORD stood on the rock before Moses. Their question set all of that aside and demanded fresh proof.

Scripture keeps Massah before God’s people as a warning. Moses names it in the command against tempting God (Deuteronomy 6:16). Psalm 95 calls God’s people to keep from hardening their hearts as Israel did in the wilderness (Psalm 95:8–11), and Hebrews takes up that psalm to warn believers against unbelief (Hebrews 3:7–11). The murmuring and testing went on, and its consequences came later, as Numbers 14 and Moses’ retelling in Deuteronomy 1 record. Right after this, Amalek comes and fights with Israel at Rephidim, and the LORD protects his people (Exodus 17:8–16).

Paul reads this event as pointing to Christ: “And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). The Son of God was with his people in the wilderness, giving them drink. Jesus offered the Samaritan woman living water that ends thirst for ever (John 4:10–14), and at the feast he cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink”, speaking of the Spirit whom those who believe on him would receive (John 7:37–39). The thirst at Rephidim was a thirst of the body, and it pictures the deeper thirst of every soul, which Christ alone satisfies.

The rock had to be struck before the water came, and in this it pictures Christ, smitten on the cross, from whom the life of the Spirit flows to all who believe. On the cross he himself said, “I thirst” (John 19:28). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), given so that whoever believes in him should have everlasting life (John 3:16).

Christ also stands where Israel fell. In his own wilderness temptation the devil urged him to put God to the proof, and Jesus answered with the law that names Massah: “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:1–11). Where Israel tested God, the Son trusted his Father. And Israel’s question, “Is the LORD among us, or not?”, has its full answer in him. His name is Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), and his promise to his people is, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

This passage shows us a God who leads his people into hard places on purpose and meets them there. The thirst at Rephidim came by his command, and so did the water. He heard the cry of his servant, answered a quarrelling crowd with mercy, and stood on the rock where the water would flow. The same thirst brought out two responses: the people quarrelled with Moses, and Moses cried to the LORD. Wherever God’s people find “no water for the people to drink”, the question of Massah has already been answered at the rock and in Christ. The LORD is among his people, and he gives drink to the thirsty.