Exodus 17:1-7 tells us of the need for water in the wilderness of Sin, at Massah and Meribah.[1] The point is the surprising and gracious provision of God. Yet, it also shows the discontent of the people in the desert.
We can understand this. Water is important. The lack of water can make us desperate and violent. Yet, when the Lord tests the people, they become testy. They rebel against Moses and the Lord. In this passage, Moses is under attack, because of the lack of water. In the long narrative of the journey through the wilderness, the people show continual restiveness. At issue is whether they will believe in the abiding presence of a protecting and caring God.
The story under consideration is part of the wilderness wandering of the people of the Lord. 1From the wilderness of Sin, a name related to Sinai, although scholars do not know the precise place. The whole congregation of the Israelites, a stock expression from the Exodus narrative (see 16:1, 9). Other expressions used for the people include simply "the people" (Exodus 15:24; 16:27), the "house of Israel" (Exodus 16:31), the "Israelites" (Exodus 16:35), and simply "Israel" (Exodus 17:8). Although women and children were not part of the formal religious congregation of Israel, the use of the word here may mean the non-liturgical "mass," and includes both women and children. The congregation journeyed by stages through the wilderness. Such a journey occurs under the providential care of the Lord for these escaped slaves and their livestock. Journey by stages suggests moving toward the destination punctuated by periods of needed rest by both people and animals. Such a journey is a sign of trust. In fact, as the Lord commanded, the congregation continued such a journey. This time, the people do what the Lord wanted. However, at one camp, they camped at Rephidim, the last station before Sinai and near Sinai, but there was no water for the people to drink. They are near the western foot of the Sinai Mountain range.[2] The result is that 2 the people quarreled (based on the name of the place "Meribah" (v. 7), which shares the same Hebrew root as “murmur”) with Moses, and said, stating clearly the complaint, “Give us water to drink.” One of the prominent themes in the large narrative recounting the exodus and wilderness experience is the people's continual restiveness, often referred to as "the murmuring tradition." The verb that usually occurs in such passages is "complained" (as in 15:24; 16:2; 17:3; Numbers 11:1, 14:2, 29). They want water, a reasonable complaint under these circumstances. It has induced fear and a tendency toward violence. Yet, their complaint also shifts responsibility from themselves to Moses. In response, Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test (as in demanding proof that the Lord was present among them and controlling the events) the Lord?” The naming of the place that occurs at the end of the story derives from these two Hebrew words for quarrel and test. The story will become an etiological story that explains the names of two wilderness springs.[3] The point is that while the Lord can test people, people have no right to test the Lord. Such testing can lead to lack of trust, obedience, and rebellion. For example, some people sought to test Jesus by wanting him to give them a sign from heaven, as if such a sign would provide proof (Luke 11:16). The fact that the people will test the Lord ten times in the wilderness is the reason none of the people enter the Promised Land (Numbers 14:22). The theological problem underlying the complaint is their anxiety about the intent of Moses and, by implication, of the Lord, in bringing these slaves into the wilderness. As is typical of complaint, they put the one they complain against in the worst possible light. 3 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?” They speculate that Moses and by implication the Lord want to kill them in the wilderness. In the process, they doubt the providential care and power of the Lord.
I would like to pause for a moment and reflect upon the action of a crowd.[4] Large groups are often smarter than isolated individuals, and how collective wisdom shapes economies and nations. There is an uncanny, unconscious collective intelligence at work among people, contrary to our common conception that a crowd is a mindless mob. A crowd can be surprisingly smart and effective — even when many members of the group are lacking intelligence or experience. Because they allow the introduction of new types of information through diversity of opinion, it is always a good idea to allow a large number of people to have a role in decision-making.
There are four conditions that characterize wise crowds, four characteristics that prevent a group from becoming a mindless mob. As the reader reflects upon this story, note how the crowd with which Moses dealt does not exhibit the qualities of a wise crowd. First, in a wise crowd there will always be a place for diversity of opinion. Each person in the group can share their privileged information, even if it is just a wild, wacky, and eccentric interpretation of the known facts. Second, a wise crowd always allows for independence, and does not force people to conform to the mentality of the mob. Third, smart crowds develop techniques for aggregation — mechanisms for turning private judgments into a collective decision. A wise crowd encourages people to speak up with a range of ideas before it reaches final decisions. Finally, wise crowds allow for decentralization. People can specialize and draw on local knowledge, instead of mindlessly doing the same things, over and over, in the very same ways that they have always done them. We might also want to apply these insights to highlight the lack of wisdom in the political scene, as political tribes create their crowd mentality through social media, but I will leave that one for another day.
4 So, in response to the complaint of the people, Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” Their desperate need is leading them to threaten violence. Stoning was usually an official act to purify the people from contamination brought by transgression. Such an act keeps one from touching the animal (Exodus 19:9b-13, 21:29) or person (especially mediums, wizards, blasphemers, violators of the Sabbath, and thieves of war booty in Leviticus 20:27; 24:23; Numbers 15:36; Joshua 7:25) at the receiving end of stoning. Naboth received the punishment of stoning based upon the fabricated charges that he cursed God and the king (I Kings 21:13). Jesus rejected the notion of the purity of the community, and thus rejected the stoning of the woman caught in the act of adultery (John 8:1-11). In any case, an angry mob, as we find David fearing in I Samuel 30:6 and Adoram in I Kings 12:18, could choose stoning as their weapon of choice. Clearly, Moses fears this angry mob. Yet, the Lord seems sympathetic to the complaint. 5 The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you. This group in Israel had an active role to play as witnesses (see, for example, Deuteronomy 25:9; Ruth 4:4, 9). Elders frequently had a more active role to play in the administration of local (Deuteronomy 19:12), national (Exodus 3:18; Joshua 7) and international (Numbers 22:7) affairs. Israel was not unique in its use of elders in positions of leadership, as those with life experience were highly valued in all the cultures of the ancient Near East, whether urban, rural, agrarian or (semi-)nomadic. Elders were part of the land of Egypt (Genesis 50:7) and for Moab and Midian as well (Numbers 22:7). The Hebrew word "elder" shares its root with the word for "beard," and signified not necessarily old age, but life experience, which was the quality most sought after and valued in elders. Much later, King Rehoboam discovered that he ought to have valued these persons rather than the advice of the young (I Kings 12). It may well be that the Lord never intended the religion of Israel to focus on one person or even one faction. Even Moses shared his authority with the elders of the tribes. Sometimes, the decision about the source of a text has a considerable influence upon the scholarly interpretation of the text. This image of Moses sharing power with others in the nation is a clear message from the Northern author responsible for E, if that is the proper source, that God never intended the religion of Israel to be “owned” in any way by any one individual or faction. Just as the monarchy shared power between the tribes in the North, with the most powerful winning the right to rule, the North also distributed the power of the worship centers throughout the territory as well (I Kings 12:25-33). For this E version of the story, it is a central fact that even though Moses shared his authority with the elders of the tribes, the nation was no more respectful of him or any of them than had his authority been as monolithic as the later Aaronide temple caste or Davidic dynasts in Jerusalem. The Lord tells Moses take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, [Exodus 7:21, 24] and go. 6 I will be standing there in front of you. Such a situation is irregular, as people are usually the ones who stand before the Lord. The Lord will stand on the rock at Horeb, which is another name for Sinai. The actual site was of common knowledge among the people. Talmudic legend said the water came from the Well of Miriam, which henceforth accompanied the Israelites on their journeys through the wilderness. The water would flow from Horeb back to Rephidim via a wadi. Moses is to strike the rock, and water will come out of it, as there are limestone rocks from which small stone rocks from which tiny amounts of water drip, and a blow to their soft surface can expose a porous inner layer containing water, so that the people may drink.” A similar story from P is in Numbers 20:2-13. The people will have their water. Even today, certain types of rock formations indicate that the sandstone has trapped rainwater beneath a thin layer of stone. Paul will spiritualize this moment, noting that the people drank from the same spiritual drink and rock, and the rock was Christ (I Corinthians 10:4). This moment of provision in the wilderness becomes a typology for the future spiritual enrichment Christ will bring.[5] Yet, the unusual way Jesus approached such matters is striking to me. He refused to validate his divine sending with a sign in Matthew 12:38-39 and 16:1-4.[6] We now learn that an important part of the reason for this story is that it provides an explanation for the names of two springs in the Sinai. Moses did so, striking the rock in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He called the place Massah (test) and Meribah (quarrel), or The Place of Testing and Quarreling, becoming bywords for the lack of trust in the Lord that Israel displayed, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, concluding with a powerful question, “Is the Lord among us or not?” The question bears no linguistic and only slight affinity with the preceding account. In Numbers 20:12, the Lord grew angry with Moses and Aaron because they did not trust the Lord. Moses equates quarreling with him to testing the Lord. It suggests lack of trust in the Lord. It suggests Israel questioned the presence and providence of the Lord. Such an accusation against their covenant-making/keeping Lord was serious. The Lord promised to be with them and guide them safely to their destination.
The story has parallels in the wilderness tradition. Exodus 15:22-23 (J) says they found some water at Marah, which received its name because of the bitterness of the water. In Numbers 20:1-13 (P), at Kadesh, the people gather against Moses and Aaron. They quarreled with Moses. They wonder why Moses has led them to such a wretched place. Their response was to go to the tent of meeting, where they fell on their faces before the Lord. The glory of the Lord appeared to them. Again, Moses is to take his staff and command the rock to bring forth water, even as creation occurred through the divine word in Genesis 1. However, since Moses struck the rock twice, the Lord says Moses and Aaron did not trust the Lord. The story explains the place name of Meribah, where the people quarreled with the Lord. In this version, the name of the site is also Meribah, as in Exodus 17. But what distinguishes this version of the story from the other two is that it provides the explanation of the great sin that prevents Moses and Aaron from entering the Promised Land with the tribes. Here God orders Moses and Aaron to take a rod and “command” (literally “tell,” Hebrew dibartem) the rock to yield its water. However, Moses instead strikes the rock twice with the rod. Although God does not condemn the people for this fault, and does provide the needed water from the rock, God condemns Moses and Aaron to die in the wilderness for not trusting that God would fulfill the divine promise of water without Moses’ assistance with the rod (Numbers 20:12). In the Priestly story, one sees the most ideological differences with the other sources and their perspectives. Both J (Exodus 15:22-26) and E (Exodus 17:1-7) portray Moses as using a ritual object, a piece of wood and a staff respectively, to produce the water miracle. In fact, God commands the use of that object. However, P (the Priestly source) insists in Numbers 20:3-13 that God’s word is all that he needs. As in P’s version of the creation (Genesis 1), the Lord God needs no physical contact with the created world to bring forth life out of the void. J and E, however, tend to portray God as maintaining a closer, often physical, contact with the world.
Another feature of the source distinctions that is interesting here is the issue of who is with Moses in each account of his water miracles. In J (Exodus 15:22-26), Moses is alone. God shows his favorite leader the answer to the problem, and he solves it without assistance. Such intimate relationships between God and individual human beings are typical of J’s narrative. In P (Numbers 20:3-13), it is not surprising that God orders Moses to take Aaron, the ancestor of the P faction, with him when he performs the miracle. The relative authority of Moses as opposed to Aaron is a major issue for this source, for whom factional infighting between priestly castes seems to persist into the time of Christ and beyond. In E (Exodus 17:1-7), however, the Lord instructs Moses to take “the seventy elders of Israel” with him when he performs the miracle. This image of Moses sharing power with others in the nation is a clear message from the Northern author responsible for E that the Lord never intended any one individual or faction to own the religion of Israel. Just as the tribes shared the power of the monarchy in the North, with the most powerful winning the right to rule, the North distributed the power of the cult throughout the territory as well (I Kings 12:25-33). For this E version of the story, it is a central fact that even though Moses shared his authority with the elders of the tribes, the nation was no more respectful of him or any of them than had his authority been as monolithic as the later Aaronide temple caste or Davidic dynasts in Jerusalem.
The fact that all three major Pentateuchal sources tell some version of this story makes clear a basic memory of the wilderness wandering period — namely, that although God was faithful to sustain the people during this time, they were ungrateful. They complained. They rebelled against God’s chosen leaders, and they forgot every kindness visited upon them by the Lord — a pattern that persisted until both Judah and Israel were destroyed.
The incident at Meribah and Massah (Numbers does not mention Massah), as an illustration of the Israelites' ingratitude and lack of faith, became something of a byword in the religious tradition of ancient Israel. It is referred to, for example, again in Deuteronomy 33:8-9, although the reference to the faithfulness of the Levites in that context appears to be a garbling of two traditions: the incident at Meribah and the apostasy of the Israelites with the golden calf at Sinai (Exodus 32:25-28), in which the Levites alone displayed unfailing loyalty to the covenant requirements.
After living as slaves in Egypt for so long, the Hebrews had lost their own sense of identity except as slaves. Slaves labor long and hard, but as valuable property, owners look after their slaves. The food might have been poor, the shelter crude - but the essentials to maintain life were available to these slaves every day. Of course, the cost was high: the cost of their own freedom. The Exodus thrust this highly dependent, city-born people into the hostile, frightening, challenging environment of a true wilderness.
The authors of this text tell the story of a confrontation between the fears of the newly freed Israelites and the leadership of Moses, over this vital issue of water. The issue of finding water for the people, however, is not the only crisis confronted in this text. Also at stake is the people’s trust in Moses’ leadership and their belief in the abiding presence of a protecting, caring God. Moses’ reply tries to redirect the people’s demand toward what he knows to be the proper source - the Lord. However, the text upholds Moses’ own leadership position by his response, for Moses reveals that picking a fight with him is the same as quarreling with the Lord. Challenging Moses is akin to testing the Lord. The second outcry from the Israelites sounds even more like the wailing of lost slaves than did the first. It is only after this second confrontation that Moses takes the thirst of the people as a serious threat to his own position and the future of the Exodus trek. Moses perceives the threats and insubordination as the only real and active danger in the present situation. There are rock formations in the Sinai that combine a hard, igneous lower level of rock with an upper level of soft, porous sandstone. Nomads know to look for these formations as sources of hidden, trapped pools of water. Rain that has seeped through the sandstone becomes trapped at the layer of rock. Wind and sand erosion can then wear away this rocky trap until small pools of water lie just below a thin layer of stone. A single, sharp blow on this igneous rock can shatter it and release this hidden water with a forceful gush.
It may be justifiable to employ the wilderness experience as metaphor, considering later significant biblical use. Initial wilderness references appear in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. There is further interpretation later in both testaments; the books of the Bible are ambivalent in understanding the purposes of the wilderness. Seen positively, the wilderness period is a time when God guides and cares for Israel during the 40 years between Egypt and the land of promise. (One can understand “40” literally [see Deuteronomy 2:14]; yet elsewhere “40” is equivalent to “quite a few.”) God also gives the torah (law/instruction) during the wilderness period, at Mount Sinai/Horeb. Deuteronomy 8 sees the wilderness as a time of God’s provision for Israel and for humbling and testing them to see if they would observe God’s commandments and rely upon God for more than food. Further, it was a time of discipline and preparation. God’s intention was “in the end to do you good” (Deuteronomy 8:16; 32:10). Yet, it also sees the length of the wilderness period as punishment for rebellion and disobedience. Further, almost none of the original Israelites who left Egypt, not even Moses and Aaron, would enter the Promised Land.[7] Occasionally Israel was obedient to the Lord in the wilderness (Jeremiah 2:2). And Israel did follow the Lord’s command to break camp for the next (unknown-to-them) encampment (Exodus 17:1a). But when life in the wilderness tests the people, they become testy; they rebel against Moses and the Lord. In our passage Moses is under attack, because of the lack of water. (There are passages where lack of food causes Israel to rebel and complain; see Exodus 16 and Numbers 11.) They quarrel with Moses (the verb means to strive/contend/quarrel/get in a dispute or brawl with.)[8]
Our experiences give us plenty of reason for anxiety and worry. Unexpected tests and trials occur on a regular basis. If we have some acquaintance with the biblical stories, we might call them “wilderness” experiences. We are not sure of our destination. We feel out of sync with God and with others. Sometimes, I suppose God might want us to go through such a time, almost as a time of preparation and discipline. God may want to show us how trustworthy God is when we face some challenging times. Yet, too often when we go through times of testing, we become testy. We start blaming other people for our situation. We offer complaints to God instead of praise and worship. We lengthen our time in our personal wilderness when we have such responses. Our ingratitude, our lack of faith, reveals far deeper problems with our spiritual life than we may have acknowledged. We think the problem is with God, in that we somehow want proof that God is there. Yet, in more ways than we can count, God has been faithful. When we go through the tests of life, we may also reveal who we are – faithless, anxious, fearful, and rebellious. Thankfully, God does not give up. God is faithful.
All of this brings to my mind the readiness of people to complain. I saw a cartoon of a church secretary talking with the pastor. An angry group of members is outside of his door with tar and feathers. "To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure 'critics' exactly describes the members waiting to see you." We must all face criticism, some of it fair and some of it not so much. Our tendency is to focus upon it. Yet, we need to learn a lesson from the great people of history. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that if he sought to answer all the criticisms that crossed his desk, he would have no time for constructive work. Abraham Lincoln offered wisdom in this regard as well.
If I were to read, much less to answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how--the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, 10 angels swearing I was right would make no difference. – Abraham Lincoln
When my grandmother was raising me in Stamps, Arkansas, she had a particular routine when people who were known to be whiners entered her store. Whenever she saw a known complainer coming, she would call me from whatever I was doing and say conspiratorially, "Sister, come inside. Come." Of course I would obey.
My grandmother would ask the customer, "How are you doing today, Brother Thomas?" And the person would reply, "Not so good." There would be a distinct whine in the voice. "Not so good today, Sister Henderson. You see, it's this summer. It's this summer heat. I just hate it. Oh, I hate it so much. It just frazzles me up and frazzles me down. I just hate the heat. It's almost killing me." Then my grandmother would stand stoically, her arms folded, and mumble, "Uh-huh, uh-huh." And she would cut her eyes at me to make certain that I had heard the lamentation.
At another time, a whiner would mewl, "I hate plowing. That packed-down dirt ain't got no reasoning, and mules ain't got good sense....Sure ain't. It's killing me. I can't ever seem to get done. My feet and my hands stay sore, and I get dirt in my eyes and up my nose. I just can't stand it." And my grandmother, again stoically, with her arms folded, would say, "Uh-huh, uh-huh," and then look at me and nod.
As soon as the complainer was out of the store, my grandmother would call me to stand in front of her. And then she would say the same thing she had said at least a thousand times, it seemed to me. "Sister, did you hear what Brother So-and-So or Sister Much-to-Do complained about? You heard that?" And I would nod.
Mamma would continue, "Sister, there are people who went to sleep all over the world last night, poor and rich, and white and black, but they will never wake again. Sister, those who expected to rise did not, their beds became their cooling boards, and their blankets became their winding sheets. And those dead folks would give anything, anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or 10 minutes of that plowing that person was grumbling about. So you watch yourself about complaining, Sister. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain."
--Maya Angelou, "Complaining,"
We tend to want the Lord to show us first, and then we will believe. Rarely will such an approach work in our desire for a meaningful faith and life. Rather, if we believe, the Lord will show us.[9] Very simply, some of the most important things in our lives will not reveal themselves to us until we believe. Relationships are like that. We need to believe in someone and increasingly trust in order to discover whether this relationship can have deepening love and friendship. We will go through times when the way seems dark and difficult. In such moments, we will learn the level of our trust.
'Tis far, far better to let God choose
The way that we should take;
If only we leave our lives to the Lord
God will guide without mistake.
We, in our blindness, would never choose
A pathway dark and rough
And so we should never find in God
The God who is enough.[10]
If it were not for tough times, we would not know the depth of love and friendship that exists between two persons, within groups, or even in a nation. Our relationship with God is like that. If it were not for challenging times, we would never experience the reality of the “God who is enough.” We seem to think we need so many things to be happy. The reality is, we do, although it may not be as many things as we think. The Lord knows we have need of such things. Yet, the difficult and struggling times bring us to the truth that God is enough. Of course, when we are going through a crisis, we often find it difficult to take a long view and trust the long, steady purpose of God. We focus on the potential shortness of our lives. We hear the clock ticking down our lives with increasing urgency. We may find it difficult to sing, “Great is thy faithfulness.” We may not see new mercies morning by morning. Yet, our testimony may also be that all we have needed, the hand of the Lord has provided. We may testify to the faithfulness to the Lord. When such tests come our way as we travel the journey of our lives by stages, the urgent question is our readiness to trust in the surprising and gracious ways the Lord will show us as individuals and communities the providential care of the Lord.
As the adage goes, good things come to those who wait. The real question, though, is how long you should have to wait for something good to happen. Think about how hard it is to wait for, say, a child to be born, or your upcoming wedding. We can wait a little while for these good things but, mostly, we humans are not very good at waiting. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we are constantly aware of the relative shortness of our life span and do not want to waste our little block of time. Some studies have shown that if you live to be 70, you will have spent a full three years of that life simply waiting for something to happen — waiting in traffic, waiting in waiting rooms, waiting on hold, waiting at the airport. We spend a lot of time anticipating, and we get more than a little frustrated if we have to wait too long for what we want or need.
Part of the problem is that the chronos time of the ticking clock governs us, but we often forget that the rest of creation tends to work on a different timetable. We are watching minutes and seconds, while the earth is marking time in epochs. While we are frantic to get things done, creation is a lot more patient.
Take, for example, an experiment begun in 1927 by Professor Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland in Australia. (http://smp.uq.edu.au/content/pitch-drop-experiment) Parnell wanted to demonstrate to his students that some substances that appear to be solid are actually liquid, so he heated some pitch — a petroleum-based substance known for its stickiness and high viscosity (this is the stuff Noah used to waterproof the ark, if you recall) — and sealed it in a funnel-shaped glass tube. After three years, the pitch had coagulated, and Parnell unsealed the tube to see how long it would take for the now solidified mass of pitch to drain out. The “Pitch Drop Experiment” was born. The result? Well, let us put it this way: By the time the first drop began to form two years later, most of Parnell’s students had graduated. By the time the first drop fell, those same students had likely forgotten Parnell and the experiment altogether. It took eight years for that first drip to drop. It took another eight years for the second drop to fall. Professor Parnell died in 1948, which means he saw only two drips (now there is an exciting life!), but the experiment keeps going. As of 2009, only eight drops have fallen, while a ninth has formed and could drop at any time. A Web cam is set up at the University of Brisbane so the world can watch it, assuming you have nothing better to do while you’re waiting for, say, paint to dry. The experiment is so slow that the Guinness Book of World Records lists it as the longest-running experiment in history — a record that should not be broken any time soon. Scientists estimate there’s enough pitch in the funnel that it will take more than 100 years to drain out, outliving all of us, too! After the eighth drip, scientists calculated that the viscosity (“stickiness” to us liberal-arts majors) of pitch is roughly 230 billion times more than that of water.
Is there a reflection on some spiritual healing here?
When I cannot understand my Father’s leading,
And it seems to be but hard and cruel fate,
Still I hear that gentle whisper ever pleading,
God is working, God is faithful, ONLY WAIT.
—L.B. Cowman, Streams in the Desert.
A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. —Henri Nouwen, Eternal Seasons, p. 48.
“If you’re serious about sanctification, you can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance and your patience.” Sheri I. Dew, If Life Were Easy, It Wouldn’t Be Hard: And Other Reassuring Truths
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made bypassing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature slowly — let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them, as though you could be today what time (that is grace and circumstances acting upon your own good will) will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give your Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, priest and scientist, The Making of the Mind
First, God is not bound by our compressed view of time. Throughout the Scriptures, God’s timing, rather than clock time, is what really matters. If chronos is time governed by the clock, kairos is time governed by God — the right time, the appropriate time, the divinely appointed time. If God created the universe billions of years ago, as science tells us, and if Earth has been shaped over millions of years by the steady drip of water and the slow shifting of tectonic plates, the one thing we come to realize theologically is that God is not in a hurry. God has a longer worldview than our temporal bodies and limited knowledge can understand. God has patiently formed creation, and God will patiently continue to form the people of God, doing things always at the right time, the kairos time, the time that suits his eternal purpose.
Second, wherever we are going, whatever we are waiting for at the end of the line, God is already there. We might call that living with an “eternal perspective,” recognizing that wherever our lives are heading, God is with us and, indeed, already ahead of us.
Henry Ward Beecher said that we do not have to like the cup of life that we are drinking now. But then he invites us to look back over the past twenty years. Look at the darkest moment. Now, it is all over, and it has wrought out its effect in your life. Would you have removed it? You are what you are by the grace of God. You were gold in the rock, and God played miner and blasted you out of the rock and then played stamper, and crushed you, and then played smelter, and melted you. Now you are gold free from the rock by the grace of God's severity to you.
[1] Some scholars suggest that an ancient “L” source may have been responsible for 17:1a, which provides such a vivid description of the Israelites’ wanderings. The “L” source is thought to be very old, originating from the people’s truly nomadic period of life. The “L” source does not denigrate the nomadic, unsettled existence, but honors wandering and wilderness as a grand tradition exactly “as the Lord commanded.” Some scholars see evidence that Exodus 17:2-7 is an E story, in the use of the name Horeb for the mountain of God [17:6] and the depiction of Moses sharing authority with the elders of Israel [17:5; 18:13-27]. Most scholars would contend that the reference to Moses striking the Nile with his staff, mentioned in 17:5 is an argument for J because the account of the original incident at the Nile (Exodus 7:14-24) has long been thought to be a J story. (Richard Elliot Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible [New York: Summit, 1987], 250). William Propp solves this dilemma, however, by deciding that the earlier story (Exodus 7:14-24) is an E story based on evidence from Exodus 17:5. (Exodus 1-18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [Anchor Bible 2; New York: Doubleday, 1999], 314). The issue of tying each account of Moses’ working a water miracle to a specific source, however, gets a little easier once one realizes that there is yet a third version of this same type scene later in the Pentateuch.
[2] The route of the Israelites from Egypt places the "wilderness of Sin" between Elim and Sinai, and continues with the places Rephidim, Dophkah and Alush, none of which can be located with certainty today (see Exodus 16:1ff and Numbers 33:11-12). If, as some scholars think, biblical Dophkah is to be identified with the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai peninsula, it is possible that the events described in occurred somewhere near the western foot of the Sinai mountain range.
[3] Moses' double question includes both Hebrew verbs that form the basis of the double place name at the end of the story, Massah and Meribah. It is likely that the narrative is consolidating two (or perhaps even three) originally separate etiological stories to explain the names of two wilderness springs.
[4] Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
[5]
[6]
[7] Numbers 14:22-24
22 none of the people who have seen my glory and the signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tested me these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, 23 shall see the land that I swore to give to their ancestors; none of those who despised me shall see it. 24 But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me wholeheartedly, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it.
Deuteronomy 1:35-39
35 "Not one of these-- not one of this evil generation-- shall see the good land that I swore to give to your ancestors, 36 except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He shall see it, and to him and to his descendants I will give the land on which he set foot, because of his complete fidelity to the LORD." 37 Even with me the LORD was angry on your account, saying, "You also shall not enter there. 38 Joshua son of Nun, your assistant, shall enter there; encourage him, for he is the one who will secure Israel's possession of it. 39 And as for your little ones, who you thought would become booty, your children, who today do not yet know right from wrong, they shall enter there; to them I will give it, and they shall take possession of it.
Deuteronomy 32:48-52
48 On that very day the LORD addressed Moses as follows: 49 "Ascend this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites for a possession; 50 you shall die there on the mountain that you ascend and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin; 51 because both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to maintain my holiness among the Israelites. 52 Although you may view the land from a distance, you shall not enter it-- the land that I am giving to the Israelites."
Psalm 95:6-11
6 O come, let us worship and bow down, l
et us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!
8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your ancestors tested me,
and put me to the proof,
though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said,
"They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they do not regard my ways."
11 Therefore in my anger I swore,
"They shall not enter my rest."
[8] [Koehler-Baumgartner, et al, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament]).
[9] (John Powell, Through Seasons of the Heart, in Christianity Today, "Reflections," February 1987, 54).
[10] (The Encyclopedia of Illustrations, #6933)
Surprised you did not use Barth on religion when discussing Mosses reliance on ritual objects. Seems to me that this is relevant. We want to relay on the "things that worked before" rather than on what God is doing today.
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