Exodus17chapter 17

Exodus 17:1-2

They came to Rephidim at the commandment of the LORD and found no water there, so the obedience and the hardship arrive together. The people bring two charges in one breath and the text keeps them apart, since chiding is aimed at Moses and tempting is aimed at the LORD. This is the fourth complaint in four chapters, after the sea at 14:11, the bitter water at 15:24 and the hunger at 16:2.

Exodus 17:3-4

The accusation is the one they made at the sea and in the wilderness of Sin, that Moses brought them out of Egypt in order to kill them, and this time it takes in the children and the cattle. Moses answers the crowd by turning to God rather than by arguing back, which is what he does at every one of these scenes. They be almost ready to stone me is the first time the anger turns toward killing him, and Numbers 14:10 records the whole congregation taking up stones.

Exodus 17:5

God sends Moses out in front of the people who were ready to stone him, and tells him what to carry. The rod is identified by what it last did, and it is one stick doing the whole book's work, the shepherd's staff that became a serpent at 4:3, the rod that turned the Nile to blood at 7:20 and the rod that divided the sea at 14:16. The elders are taken along so that the water has witnesses who watched it happen.

Exodus 17:6

God puts himself at the place the blow lands, standing on the rock that Moses is told to strike. The word rock occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and Horeb is the mountain where the bush burned at 3:1 and where the law will be given. Paul writes at 1 Corinthians 10:4 that they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ, which is the New Testament drawing the line itself. Matthew Henry and John Wesley both read the struck rock this way in their comments on the verse.

Exodus 17:7

Massah means temptation and Meribah means strife, so the place is named after what Israel did there rather than after what God did. Their question, Is the LORD among us, or not, is asked by people standing under a pillar of cloud and drinking water out of a stone. Psalm 95:8 makes this the pattern of a hard heart, and Hebrews 3:7 to 3:11 quotes that psalm and applies it to its own readers. Exodus answers every one of these complaints with water, bread, meat or a dry road, and the same complaints in Numbers bring judgment instead, which is a change neither book states on its own.

Exodus 17:8

This is the first war Israel fights as a nation, and it comes before the law, before the tabernacle and directly after the water. Matthew Henry and Adam Clarke both trace Amalek to Esau by way of Eliphaz at Genesis 36:12, which would make the first nation to attack Israel a relative. John Gill records the objection that the desert Amalekites look older than that son of Eliphaz, so the descent is a reading held by named men rather than a settled fact. Deuteronomy 25:18 supplies what Exodus leaves out, that they struck the faint and weary at the back of the column.

Exodus 17:9-10

Joshua is named here for the first time in Scripture, and the man who will lead Israel into the land is introduced choosing men for a fight. The work is split between a valley and a hilltop, with the sword below and the rod of God above. Hur arrives in verse 10 with no introduction at all, and he stands with Aaron again at 24:14 when Moses goes up the mountain. Josephus and the rabbis make him the husband of Miriam, which is tradition rather than anything the text says.

Exodus 17:11-13

The battle rises and falls with the hand on the hill rather than with the fighting in the valley, and the verse says it twice so the reader cannot miss it. What the raised hand means has been read two ways, as a banner lifted to rally the men, and as the posture of prayer, which is how the Targum renders it and how John Gill reports the older Jewish readers. A stone is put under Moses and two men hold his arms steady until sundown, so the thing the day turns on is the thing that gives out first. Joshua wins the field with the edge of the sword, and the account still gives him the credit by name.

Exodus 17:14

This is the first command in Scripture to write anything, and the subject of it is the blotting out of Amalek. The word memorial was used at 3:15 of the name of God, and here it is attached to a written record meant to outlast the men who fought. Moses is told to rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, which puts it in front of the man who will still be leading forty years later. Deuteronomy 25:17 to 25:19 repeats the charge, 1 Samuel 15 is where Saul is sent to carry it out, and Haman is still called the Agagite at Esther 3:1.

Exodus 17:15-16

And Moses built an altar: The name is given to the altar rather than to the place, and the name is Jehovah-nissi, the LORD my banner. Verse 16 is one of the hardest lines in the book to render, since the Hebrew reads a hand upon the throne of the LORD, and translators differ over whose hand it is. The King James takes it as an oath sworn by God, while Adam Clarke reads it as the hand of Amalek set against the throne of God. Both readings leave the same result standing, that the war runs from generation to generation, and the rest of the Old Testament treats it as still open.