Ever since I started working at my current job, I have enjoyed a regular series of questions (at least weekly) from my desk neighbor. These questions, whether they are deeply theological or practical, always invite curiosity. Here’s my first attempt in translating one into a post. Maybe I’ll write about them more often in the future.
In today’s conversation we were joined by another coworker; the more the merrier! The question revolved around Moses and what he did wrong at the waters of Meribah. The passage in question comes from Numbers 20:2-13. This narrative tells us that the LORD told Moses to speak to/command the rock, and water would come forth, but Moses struck the rock twice with his staff. Then the LORD says, “Because you [Moses and Aaron] did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.”
How do we teach from this passage?
What would be the main idea of a sermon?
We shared that sometimes this passage is used to preach against unrestrained anger; so… keep your anger in check! Other times it is used to underscore how important it is to follow God’s command to the letter… so don’t do things however you want! You must pay careful attention to God’s word.
I have heard both of these interpretations/applications in the churches that I’ve attended. It’s a pretty direct application of what’s presented in the text. Even the latter application to follow the specificity of God’s word finds support in distinguishing the Numbers 20 passage from a similar occurrence in Exodus 17, where Moses is told to strike the rock. Sometimes God says strike! Other times he says speak! Don’t get it wrong! After this allowance between the two passages, I love where the conversation went next.
We started to sympathize with Moses.
Poor Moses.
He went through so much. He had to navigate cross-cultural differences. He had to lead people who didn’t want to be led. People who grumbled all the time, who kept forgetting what the LORD had already done for him.
He was faithful through all that… and loses out on the promised land because of a bad day burst of anger?!
That just seems so unfair. Something didn’t seem right about it.
It was that sympathy… turned empathy for me… combined with a more curious and open view of scripture, that led me to share with them some raw thoughts I had regarding the passage.
Our innate sense of justice.
Upon reading Numbers 20 and Exodus 17 back-to-back, I started to take the view that both passages are recounting the same event. There were just too many similarities between them to think they were two distinct events. How many times could Moses rename a place to “Meribah” at and event that includes water and rocks and striking?
I haven’t done any research into this — it’s more of a gut-intuition — but I think that both of these passages offer a perspective on Moses in relation to the author. In Exodus, it is a saving event. Moses is celebrated for following the LORD a providing water to the parched Israelites.
In the Numbers account, I think the author is using this event to make sense of why Moses, their great leader, did not make it to the promised land; he only got to see it from afar (Deut 3). It’s trying to make sense of a reality in hindsight. To give some sort of explanation so we are not left wondering if God is really just.
Just like how we sympathized with Moses at our desk conversation, I think Numbers 20 is trying to make sense of a kind of injustice. How often do we complain about the unfairness of life or ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” It’s a question that has been asked in every culture and across all human history. We have an innate sense of injustice and we naturally seek meaning or will attempt to make meaning when things aren’t right.
The explanation that the LORD judged Moses for striking the rock instead of speaking seems to be an attempt to make sense of the reality on such unfairness. Moses deserved better… but he didn’t get it. When I read Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 side-by-side, I see fellow human beings struggling with the ever-present theodicy, and I find that I have a kind of kinship with them. They were dealing with the same things we deal with today. They’re expressing our common human longing for goodness and wholeness and a hope that it will ultimately be realized.