The giving of water in Rephidim.
I. OBSERVE HOW THE PEOPLE CAME TO REPHIDIM. There is a distinct intimation that it was according to the commandment of Jehovah. He it was who led them where there was no water to drink, and equally he must have given them the intimation to pitch their tents. And we who read the narrative are not at all discomposed on learning that there was no water in this place of encampment. We remember how God has already shown that his ways are not as men's ways, by taking his people where they were entangled in the land, and the wilderness shut them in (Exodus 14:3). And we are sure that as he then showed what men count folly to be the highest wisdom, so it would prove again. Water is a necessity, and when Jehovah takes his people where there is no water to drink, it must be under the compulsion of a still higher necessity. If water had been one of the chief things to consider, the people would never have gone to Rephidim at all. But at present the great matter for consideration was Sinai, the mountain where the people were to serve God. Everything else was in subordination to the sojourn at Sinai. God could bring Rephidim to Sinai, and he did so when he caused Moses to smite the rock; but it was not possible to bring Sinai to Rephidim.
II. OBSERVE THEIR FIRST REQUEST, AND THE ANSWER OF MOSES. "Give us water that we may drink." The mere words, of course, tell us nothing as to the spirit of the request. In certain circumstances such a request would be innocent and natural enough. Jesus began his conversation with the woman at the well by asking her for a drink of water. The request here, however, was evidently expressed in a complaining, chiding tone; and we can only understand it as we come to study the rejoinder of Moses. That. rejoinder shows how he is becoming more and more alarmed at the perils into which the unbelief of the people is taking them. They are still looking towards Moses; they cannot be got to understand that he is as much dependent on the cloudy pillar as are the rest of them. Him who had been given to help and encourage their faith, they treat in such a way that he becomes a stumbling-block. Hence he tries his best to move away their thoughts from himself to Jehovah, with whose long-suffering he warns them that they are making very presumptuous and perilous experiments. They are on dangerous ground, and none the less dangerous because they tread it with such profane unconcern. There had now been several trials of the Divine long-suffering in the short time since they had left Egypt (Exodus 14:11, Exodus 15:24, Exodus 16:3, Exodus 16:20, Exodus 16:27); and through all these God had moved gently, providing and protecting, even in the midst of their unbelief. But this gentleness of dealing could not go on for ever; and Moses felt it was quite time to warn them, so that none in Israel might delude themselves with the notion that whatever they said and however they complained Jehovah would not smite them.
III. IN DUE COURSE, THERE IS A SECOND APPEAL TO MOSES. Their first request seems to have come immediately on encamping. They look round with an instinctive feeling for the water supply; and, missing it, they ask for it. Then they wait awhile; and, of course, the longer they wait the more thirst begins to assert itself. Their children cry; and all the cattle signify, in an equally impressive way, their want of water. (Remember what a terrible calamity the want of water is in eastern countries.) No wonder then that increasing thirst drove the Israelites to the bitter complainings of Exodus 17:3. It was not without a profound reason in the plans of God that waterless Rephidim lay so near Sinai. He will make his people to know the utter privations that belong to Rephidim as well as the bitterness of Marah and the abundance of Elim. Thus they passed in a very remarkable way, and in a very short time, through three great representative experiences with regard to the resources of nature. They found those resources existent but impaired at Marah; well-nigh perfect at Elim; and at Rephidim altogether absent. Then, to add further to the significance of Rephidim, God made the people to wait there till their want of water became little short of agony. Not that he delights in inflicting pain; but pain is often needful to teach great lessons, he seems to have made them wait longer at Rephidim where there was no water, than at Marah where the water was only bitter. Hence the exasperation, defiance, almost despair which find utterance in their second cry. For all they can see, they are on the point of death; they, their children and their cattle. And yet this very reference—excusable as it might be in their half-maddened state—suggested at once its own confutation. God had worked by special interventions to bring those very children and cattle out of Egypt intact. Those first-born especially, for whom the lamb had been slain and the blood sprinkled, was it likely they would perish from a thing so entirely within Divine control as lack of water? The truth seems to be that one more great discovery had. to be made by Israel before they came to Sinai. They had known Jehovah appearing to them in bondage and more and more manifesting his power; giving them at last an exceeding abundant deliverance from bondage and overwhelming their great enemy in all his strength. These were all completed experiences. There remained one thing more, namely that they should be made to feel their dependence on Jehovah for bread and water. That dependence must be taught in the most practical way, before he proceeded formally to ask as he did at Sinai, for the unreserved regard and obedience of his people.
IV. THIS OCCASION EVIDENTLY BECAME THE MEANS OF DRAWING MOSES HIMSELF NEARER TO GOD. We feel that he was coming into peril from the exasperated people. They were, indeed, past all argument and expostulation—suffering themselves, and made more frantic still by the cries of their children and the threatened damage to their property. So here again we see how Moses' own path was the path of faith. Jehovah has ever some fresh revelation of power to deepen the impression already made on the mind of his servant with regard to his omnipotence. Moses must be brought to feel by all sorts of illustrations that God can do everything which is not by its very nature impossible and which does not contradict his own character.
V. OBSERVE THE METHOD OF SUPPLY.
1. God has the elders called out from among the people. Thus, for his own purposes, he still further extends the period of waiting. Possibly it was through these very elders, chosen and responsible men among the people, that the complaints and threats had come. The Israelites, even in their unbelief and worldliness, did not degenerate into a rabble. They had their leaders, whom they chose, recognised from the human point of view, as well as that leader whom God had sent, and whom they so often had despised and rejected. The time had come to make these elders feel their responsibility. Many who made light of Moses looked to them; and according to the way they spoke and acted, they would do much either to produce faith throughout the people, or, on the other hand, to produce unbelief.
2. God brings the rod once more into requisition, and as he does, makes a special connection of it with one accomplished work in particular. With that rod Moses had been the means of smiting the river and turning it to blood; the import of the reference evidently being that water everywhere is under the Divine control. By this time there must surely have been great virtue in the sight of the rod to call forth faith and expectation. Hitherto it had been used to destroy—it delivered, indeed, at the same time that it destroyed but now it is called to a work of unmixed beneficence. All that had been done so far was right and necessary; but it is well that there should now be one work of the rod which, in blessing Israel, does not inflict harm on a single human being.
3. The source whence the water comes. From a rock. The smiting, of course, was simply a symbolic action, just as the smiting of the water was. It was not as if some blow had been struck, suddenly opening up a hidden reservoir. What God did here by smiting he commanded, at a later date, to be done by speaking. (Numbers 20:8.) The water came, and was to be understood as coming, from a most unlikely place. Did we know more of the details, more as to the kind of rock that was smitten and the way in which the water gushed forth, we might be even more deeply impressed with the miracle. It may not be going too far to say that no amount of excavating or tunnelling would have got water from that rock. He who turned the water to blood made water to flow from an arid rock in some altogether mysterious way. Doubtless many of the Israelites were beginning to think that it was with a rocky God they had to deal; a hard, unsympathising Deity; that, in short, they had exchanged a human Pharaoh for a Divine one. And so God shows them that even the rock holds unexpected, abundant, and exactly appropriate blessings. The rock at Meribah was a good symbol of Jehovah for the time. He had already presented to the people much that was in aspect stern and unyielding; and he would have to do this still more in the future. And yet in the midst of all necessary hardness, he took care to refresh his people with gracious comforts and promises. He who demands that everything shall be done in righteousness, truth, and profound reverence for his will, is by no means one of those tyrants who seek to reap where they have not sown. Rather does he take his people into circumstances seemingly the most unfavourable, seeking there to teach them how, if they only sow a spirit of faith, obedience, and expectation, they shall reap a sufficient and steady supply for all their daily wants.
VI. OBSERVE THE NAME THAT WAS GIVEN TO THE PLACE. Massah and Meribah. These words did not so much mark the power and providence of God as the unbelieving, self-regarding spirit of the people. This they constantly needed to be reminded of. It might well happen that some of the more sanguine would say, "We shall never be unbelievers again; we shall go with confidence into any place whatever, whither the Lord may lead us." And so these warning names are fixed for them to look back upon. The unbelief of the people was not to be lost in the glory of the Divine action, as if it were a thing of no consequence. We cannot dispense with any recollection of the past, however disagreeable it may be, which keeps before us our own deficiencies, and impresses upon us the need of constant humility.—Y.
HOMILIES BY G. A. GOODHART