From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried out to the LORD, “What shall I do for this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” The LORD said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”
Exodus 17:1–7 (NRSVue)
A year ago, my father-in-law Dale and I hiked the “100-mile Wilderness” in Maine, the final stretch of the Appalachian Trail. The Wilderness was one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited. Being separated for about ten days from the busyness, noise, and media of our world was a life-renewing experience. But it was also very physically demanding, especially for a novice hiker like me who had not adequately trained. With no access to public utilities and stores, we had to carry all of our food on our backs. For water, we were entirely dependent on filtering water from the streams that occasionally intersect the trail. Each morning as we packed up camp, we planned our day’s trek around the probability of reaching an oasis before our thirst escalated to a dangerous level. There were a couple of days when we had to make a difficult decision to either press forward without water or risk our successful completion by turning back to the nearest known stream. Fortunately, Dale was an experienced hiker and kept us safe.
My experience in Maine gives me empathy for the refugee community described in Exodus 17, traveling through a wilderness from oasis to oasis. I have felt the palpable concern that arises when, exhausted and thirsting, they reach a spot that ought to have water but does not. My own adventure was purely recreational, but for many who cross wildernesses, the journey is a matter of life-and-death. It was certainly life-and-death for the Israelites who were fleeing unbearable oppression in Egypt, crossing an unforgiving wilderness for refuge and asylum in a new homeland.
Biblical scholars are split over whether the Exodus narrative reflects a historical migration or a fictional origin story for Israel. Either way, the authors of our narrative accessed and depicted the very real and harrowing experience of millions of historical, flesh-and-blood migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers crossing treacherous borders in a desperate dash toward a livable existence.
For example, each year, more than 100 beloved children of God perish in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona while attempting to find a livable existence in the United States. Humane Borders, a humanitarian organization that tracks migrant exposure deaths in Arizona and works to provide water stations in the desert, reports that 2026 is on track to be a particularly severe year for migrant deaths, with already 86 known deaths through August (compared to only 70 at this time last year). Organizations like Humane Borders, No More Deaths, and Amnesty International regularly face opposition to their humanitarian efforts from government agencies, law enforcement, and vigilante vandals, whose priorities are to deter migration rather than provide life-sustaining aid.
There is a similar tension between the anxieties of authority and the legitimate needs of desperate people in the brief narrative we read in Exodus 17. The large company of refugees from Egypt needed water to live. Like Dale and me in Maine, the traveling Israelites were completely dependent on finding oases if they were to reach their destination. They would only have camped at Rephidim if they were expecting to find water there, or if they were physically incapable of continuing on. Their complaint is not about mere discomfort—it is a truly life-threatening situation for the entire community.
Their leader Moses, however, appears less concerned about the people’s danger, and more concerned with keeping the peace and keeping his position of authority. He expresses his anxiety to the thirsting crowds: “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” (Exodus 17:2). When he finally takes the matter to Israel’s Holy One, it is not humanitarian concern but his own bodily safety and status that is front of mind: “They are almost ready to stone me” (Exodus 17:4).
The Holy One responds to Moses’s cry, but without any of the defensiveness and insecurity displayed by Moses himself. Divine provision is offered for both concerns: the people are to be given (miraculous) water to drink, and more importantly, Moses is affirmed in the sight of the elders (we might call this a political “photo op”) as a true prophetic ambassador, wielding divine authority.
The emphasis in the narrative seems to be Moses’s authority rather than the people’s legitimate need, as illustrated by the irony that the miracle of water itself is omitted! The story reports Moses’s obedience to the divine instructions—and then jumps immediately to the explanation of the place’s names: Massah (test) and Meribah (quarrel), leaving us to suppose that in the meantime the people’s thirst must have been slaked by a miraculous spring of water. Indeed, the New Living Translation’s editors, perhaps feeling this narrative void, add the detail that is missing in the Hebrew, “So Moses struck the rock as he was told, and water gushed out as the elders looked on” (Exodus 17:6, NLT, italics added). On the contrary, in the original telling, no water is reported. The names Moses assigns to this site reinforce that the story’s emphasis is not on the miracle but on the testing and quarreling of the people, who despite ten plagues on Egypt (Exodus 7–12), pillar of cloud and fire (Exodus 13:21–22), a split sea (Exodus 14:21–15:21), bitter water made sweet (Exodus 15:22–25), quail and manna (Exodus 16), have not yet learned to trust their Redeemer or their Redeemer’s prophet.
In the tension between the people’s need for water and Moses’s need for order and legitimation, the narrative appears to lean in Moses’s direction, affirming his leadership and promoting a quietist posture under his authority. This is what we might call the “public transcript” of the text (to use James C. Scott’s coinage), behavior and communication that appears to uphold the status quo of social power dynamics. Nevertheless, this story may also preserve a “hidden transcript,” a subversive voice, subtly resisting the dominant thread of the narrative. This hidden transcript may have been planted by the story’s scribal authors, weaving creative solidarity with the people into the story over-against the message-control of those with political authority—or this may be a way to perceive meaning in the text in spite of its authors’ agenda. Either way, it is fruitful to consider alternative ways to read this episode, beyond a surface message of quietism: “Don’t grumble. Trust God’s appointed authorities.”
One way into the hidden transcript may be linguistic. The term the NRSVue translates “complain” (Hebrew: lun) is a relatively rare term, appearing only 14 times in the Hebrew Bible, and confined to these wilderness wandering stories (Exodus 15–17; Numbers 14–17; plus a single occurrence in Joshua 9:18). Since its usage is limited, it is better to translate with a generally neutral connotation (like the English “complain”) rather than a morally pejorative connotation (like the English “grumble” or “murmur,” as lun is sometimes translated). In other words, the use of the term lun does not necessarily imply that the reader is meant to pass judgement on those making complaints. Such flexibility invites us to read the people’s “complaint” as entirely legitimate.
Similarly, while lun is used only once in this story (Exodus 17:3), the narrator characterizes the people’s complaint more often with a different term: riv (as a verb in Exodus 17:2, 3, 7; and in the name meRIBah, Exodus 17:7). The NRSVue translates riv as “quarrel,” a legitimate translational option. It is a term that connotes conflict, sometimes even violent or military conflict. But it is also commonly used to connote legal disputes (see, for example, Genesis 26:17–22; Isaiah 1:17; 3:13). When the people riv with Moses about their thirst, perhaps we could hear this not as “quarrelsomeness” or a threat of “mob violence” (as Moses perceives it), but as a legitimate legal demand: “You and your God have brought us into this wilderness, Moses. It is therefore your obligation to keep us from dying of thirst.” This reading invites us to hear in the people’s riv a kind of lawsuit, an appeal to their human rights and dignity. Could we hear in the naming of this place Meribah not, “This is where the people quarreled with Moses,” but rather, “This is where the people found the boldness to claim their rightful dignity”?
A final term used to describe the people’s action in this narrative is nassah (a verb in Exodus 17:2, 7; and in the name maSSAH in Exodus 17:7). It is almost universally translated “test” in English, as in the NRSVue. But I have long suspected that something important is lost from the Hebrew in this rendering of the term. In English, the verb and noun “test” most often carries a pejorative sense, evoking the image of someone looking for an opportunity to entrap another in a moment of public failure: gotcha! In the courses I teach, I do not often give “tests” as summative evaluations because it is so difficult to overcome students’ automatic suspicion that tests are meant to catch them failing. I do not think we need to see the Israelites’ behavior as a “test” of God in that failure-spotting way. A leading Hebrew lexicon (HALOT) offers other possible renderings of nassah: “to give experience, train,” or “to conduct a test, make an attempt.” These versions of “test” offer the connotations of experiential learning, of “testing out” something. These are the kinds of tests I try to include in my courses: opportunities for students to consolidate their learning or discover their competence by trying out something for themselves. With this sense of the term nassah, I read the naming of this place “Massah” as an affirmation of the Israelites’ theological discovery at this site. Israel “tested” and learned that their Redeemer was responsive to their physical needs and to their complaints. Their God was a responsible, reliable Provider.
The hidden transcript of Exodus 17 affirms the Israelites’ human dignity and legitimates their claim against Moses and even against God. When their lives were in danger due to thirst, it was right of them to voice their need. Indeed, it was the very vocalization (riv) of their need that opened an opportunity (nassah) to experience the responsive faithfulness of God.
Such a scripture invites those who thirst today, such as those traversing the Sonoran desert in the hope of a liveable existence, to raise their voice in protest, to insist that their human value be recognized. And it invites those of us who have plenty to amplify that complaint, to set aside the anxieties of those seeking to maintain lopsided power and position, and partner with the Divine “so that the people may drink” (Exodus 17:6).
