Attacking the Rock - Exodus 17:1-7

17:1-3 - Chapter 17 is short but has some interesting insights. TB notes that it’s universally agreed that chapter 17 is not in chronological order and actually happens a few chapters later. TB also points out that this happens only a couple of weeks after the manna started showing up. I was under the impression that they didn’t fight anyone until 40 years after they left Egypt, which apparently is incorrect, and the fact that this is only a couple of weeks later is important. Mostly it’s important because when Moses takes the Hebrews out of the Sin desert to a place called Rephidim, there “was no water for the people to drink.” This begs the question, why would God command Moses to take the people to a place where there was no water?

Interestingly, TB suggests that this place Rephidim was very close to where he had lived in Midian for all those years previously and that as a shepherd, he would have been pretty familiar with it and would have known whether or not there is water there and it’s believed that there usually us plenty of water there which explains why Moses would have taken them there. This suggests that the fact that there was no water there indicates that there was some sort of unusual drought situation. So why would God have taken all those 3 million people to a place where He knew there was no water? Because He knew how they would react.

The people apparently didn’t just bring up the fact that “hey we have no water,” but they “did chide with Moses.” This doesn’t seem too disrespectful to me, but TB notes that the proper translation from Hebrew is more accurately translated as “is God really still with us?” and I guess that is seen when they state “wherefore I this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?” And I mean, at that point it must have been maddening. They had bread and meat provided miraculously from the sky every single day, they had already experienced repeated miracles where they were delivered from literal slavery, walked through the sea on dry ground, and undrinkable water made potable miraculously, and they were still like “so did God leave or what?”

I have the hand of God in my life constantly, but let’s just say that it is significantly more subtle than what these people experience and I’m expected to complain significantly less. I’ve always wondered if people are really that difficult, not these Hebrews specifically, but just people in general, which begs the question, am I like this? It’s something that I think about often. It’s easy to see other people’s short comings, but more difficult to see our own. It just really is a cause for constant self-reflection, am I being unreasonably difficult, or just the regular amount?

17:4-7 - Moses goes to God and asks what he should do, and God responds patiently, without scolding anyone, even though I’m sure He was frustrated, tells Moses to take the elders of Israel and stand before a big rock in Horeb where they are “and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.” I have never thought anything about this statement or action before but TB notes something very significant that we can only now understand and that the people back then, including Moses himself, couldn’t have understood.

I imagined Moses hitting the rock with his staff in a way to bring out water, but kind of in a way like you’d hit a baseball with a bat, emotionally benign, doing it as a means to an end but not having any malice in it, like to destroy the thing. However, there is an interesting insight here because of the word used, nachah “carries with it the sense of attacking with a purpose to cause harm, even to kill.” He also notes “this word nacha (meaning to hit) would NOT based to describe something benign like hitting a nail with a hammer… so, the use of the word nachaw when describing hitting the rock so that water would come forth seems out of place. What would be the point of using a word like machah that has with it an aura of malice and violence, in this setting?... If it were not for the connection with what would eventually happen to Our Rock, Yeshua, when He was truck with malice and violence, the use of that Hebrew word here at Horeb would be out of place.” I guess it would be equivalent to the it translated into our words as "Moses attacked the rock or something like that.

Maybe I didn’t set that up right, because he spent several minutes talking about Jesus Christ as living water, and it was really interesting so feel free to go back and look at it because it’s quite powerful and he expounds quite a bit on the incident with the bitter water as well being made drinkable when some wood was put into it. Speaking of the previous incident with the bitter water, TB comments, “And, now comes Christ, who is hung onto a piece of wood, His precious blood spilled all over it. But what miraculous qualities that wood, that cross, has; for when that Divine wood, the Cross, is immersed into our lives and our bitterness, our oppression, is taken away… And so it is with those who are crucified with Yeshua; His wooden cross, immersed into our bitter lives, transforms our lives and makes them sweet and free from the oppression of the power of sin.” There was also a portion that talked about how what was once death, either no water to drink or bitter water, when God became involved, he miraculously provided clean water or cured the bitter ones and saved the lives of the people. Likewise, we as people were destined for death, spiritually and physically, but Jesus Christ miraculously provided a way, through Him, to save our lives. Incredible. I would have read right over that.