This week our Torah portion describes the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea and follows the children of Israel to Mt. Sinai. The Torah portion can be divided into two parts. The first part takes us from Passover to the Red Sea (Exo. 13:17–14:31). The second part covers the period from the beginning of the wilderness experience to Mount Sinai (15:22–17:16). In between these two parts is the Song of Moses (15:1–18).
It is after the Song of Moses, in the second part of the portion, that we read three episodes of the people “grumbling” over the need for food and water. Food and water are the primary needs of human beings to survive. God does not chastise the people for these grumblings. In each case, He meets the need. We see in this the unshakable love of God and His faithfulness to the covenant that He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not only does He deliver the people out of Egypt, but He meets their needs along the way. We read repeatedly that God heard their grumblings and met their need. Later, in the Book of Deuteronomy, we read in retrospect that God was testing them along the way. We could say that He was mentoring them or discipling them into a life of dependence on God.
The third of the three episodes of grumbling (17:1–7) is different from the first two. We read several descriptive words that are unique to this episode. Not only are they “grumbling,” but they are “quarreling” with God. This is not simply a word to describe “arguing.” The word means to bring a case against someone. The text also says that they were putting God to the test. We even read what they were thinking/saying: “He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the LORD, saying, ‘Is the LORD among us, or not?’” (17:7). This was a serious lack of trust in God. It is different from complaining about a lack of food and water. This was a question of whether God was even with them. It was a question of trust. In his chesed and understanding, God provided the water.
However, this episode is remembered later in the Scriptures in several places, most notably in Psalm 95:8–11 in the Tanakh. In this psalm, the attitude of the people in the wilderness in Exodus 17 is described as a hardening of the heart toward God. The psalm equates their testing God with their refusal to enter the land in Numbers 14. God provided the water, but we read in Psalm 95 that He loathed that generation because of their unfaithfulness. Again, let me reiterate that complaining to God was not the problem. It was challenging God (i.e., testing God by questioning His reality and love for them ) which was the problem.
The passage in Psalm 95:8–11 is repeated in the Book of Hebrews in the third and fourth chapters. The writer of Hebrews warns the people to stay faithful and not give up on Yeshua because of great difficulty!
In the wilderness, the people had certain expectations of the journey that were not met. They did not expect hardship. Sometimes sincere people have been fed wrong expectations about Yeshua and end up shipwrecked in their faith. May we trust God in all circumstances and remember the promise that He will never leave or forsake us (Heb. 13:5b). “Let us encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” (Heb. 3:13; 10:23)
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Howard
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