Did Moses bring water from the rock at Rephidim by striking it, or at Kadesh by speaking to it?

Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate

Two different events

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The passages

Exodus 17:1–7

At Rephidim, soon after the exodus, God tells Moses to strike the rock in Horeb; water comes out, and the place is called Massah and Meribah.

And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the Lord, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink. Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the Lord? And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. …

Numbers 20:1–13

At Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, God tells Moses to speak to the rock; Moses strikes it twice, and is told he will not bring Israel into the land.

Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them. …

Numbers 33:36–38

From Kadesh Israel moves on to Mount Hor, where Aaron dies in the fortieth year after the exodus.

And they removed from Ezion–gaber, and pitched in the wilderness of Zin, which is Kadesh. And they removed from Kadesh, and pitched in mount Hor, in the edge of the land of Edom. And Aaron the priest went up into mount Hor at the commandment of the Lord, and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the first day of the fifth month.

The objection

Exodus 17 says that Moses brought water out of a rock at Rephidim by striking it, as God commanded. Numbers 20 places the event at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin and says that God told Moses to speak to the rock. Both places are called Meribah, so critics take these as two versions of one story that disagree on where it happened and what Moses was told to do.

The answer

These are two different events, nearly forty years apart, and the Bible tells them as two. The first came at Rephidim in the first months after the exodus, on the way from the wilderness of Sin to Mount Sinai (Exodus 16:1; 17:1; 19:1-2). There God told Moses to strike “the rock in Horeb”, and Moses did so. The second came at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin at the end of the wanderings: from Kadesh Israel moved on to Mount Hor, where Aaron died “in the fortieth year” after the exodus (Numbers 20:22-29; 33:36-38). In Hebrew, Sin and Zin (Tsin) are different names for two different deserts, though they look alike in English.

At Kadesh God gave a different command: “speak ye unto the rock before their eyes” (Numbers 20:8). The point of the story is that Moses did not do this. He spoke angrily to the people instead, and “smote the rock twice” (20:10-11). The water still came, but Moses and Aaron heard their sentence: they had not believed God, to sanctify him in the eyes of Israel, and so they would not lead the people into the land (20:12). Numbers 27:14 and Deuteronomy 32:51 look back to this second event as the reason Moses died outside Canaan; nothing of the kind is said about Rephidim, where he obeyed. So the different command is not a slip between two versions of one story. It is what makes the second story what it is.

Both places were called Meribah, ‘strife’, because at both the people quarrelled with Moses (Exodus 17:7; Numbers 20:13). The name fitted any such place, and the Bible marks the second as “the water of Meribah in Kadesh” (Numbers 27:14).

Still open

Many critical scholars regard the two stories as variants of one tradition, though the text presents them as separate, with different places, times, commands and outcomes. Christians also discuss exactly what Moses’ sin was: striking instead of speaking, his angry words to the people, or the unbelief that lay behind both. The text names unbelief (Numbers 20:12), and Psalm 106:33 says “he spake unadvisedly with his lips”.

From the classic commentators

the occurrences at Rephidim (or Massah-Meribah) and at Kadesh are altogether different from each other. In Rephidim, God gave the people water out of the rock, and the murmuring of the people was stayed.C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Numbers 20, at Bible Hub

Did Moses bring water from the rock at Rephidim by striking it, or at Kadesh by speaking to it?

The passages

The objection

The answer

Other answers Christians give

A picture of Christ

Still open

From the classic commentators

Sources

Further reading