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Exodus 17:2

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 Yahweh?”
Exodus 17:2

Context / meaning

Exodus 16 [31.] The house of Israel called its name Manna,[b] and it was like coriander seed, white; and its taste was like wafers with honey. Moses said, “This is the thing which Yahweh has commanded, ‘Let an omer-full of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” Moses said to Aaron, “Take a pot, and put an omer-full of manna in it, and lay it up before Yahweh, to be kept throughout your generations.” As Yahweh commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept. The children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land. They ate the manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan. Now an omer is one tenth of an ephah.[c]

Exodus 17 [1.] All the congregation of the children of Israel traveled from the wilderness of Sin, by their journeys, according to Yahweh’s commandment, and encamped in Rephidim; but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore 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 Yahweh?”


Exodus 17 [3.] The people were thirsty for water there; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?”

Exodus 17 [4.] Moses cried to Yahweh, saying, “What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

Exodus 17 [5.] Yahweh said to Moses, “Walk on before the people, and take the elders of Israel with you, and take the rod in your hand with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb. You shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the name of the place Massah,[a] and Meribah,[b] because the children of Israel quarreled, and because they tested Yahweh, saying, “Is Yahweh among us, or not?”

Footnotes:

b. Exodus 16:31 “Manna” means “What is it?”
c. Exodus 16:36 1 ephah is about 22 liters or about 2/3 of a bushel
a. Exodus 17:7 Massah means testing.
b. Exodus 17:7 Meribah means quarreling.


quarrelsome
PIB Scriptures are derived from the World English Bible

 

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