Power to the People II! A Reflection on Exodus 17:1-7

The interpretation of the story I gave in the previous essay has been suppressed, or ignored, and the first suppression happens in the last four verses of the story (17:4-7). Moses repairs to God. God gives him instructions to parade before the people and strike the rock, out of which water will come. Moses did so. Then, he names the place "Massah" and "Meribah," to emphasize the quarreling of the people against Moses and the testing of God by the people. In fact, the way that the story works out rather justifies the people's complaint in v. 2. After all, how often have you seen water gushing from a rock? We even have a phrase in English--"that is like getting water from a stone"--a phrase that signifies impossibility. You can wax eloquently all you want about our necessity being God's opportunity, and God's ability to bring miraculous provisions of goods from unexpected sources, but when it comes down to it, no one, Moses included, expected things to work out this way.

But the story couldn't just "stand there" in the narrative, uninterpreted and alone. The author quickly had to cover it over by putting a construal on the text that elevated Moses and blamed the people. He learned the first trick of historiography--that if you want to get your work published, you make the big people (i.e. Moses) look good. And the issue is worse for you if you are one who believes in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, because then you have here nothing more than a blatant attempt to whitewash the record by Moses for his own glory. It is like asking Roger Clemens to write the definitive account of the allegations of his steroid use.

So, Moses and the author of the passage interpret it in a manner that serves Moses and denigrates the people. The Psalms picked up this tradition, as did the author of the letter to the Hebrews. The people in the wilderness are therefore a stubborn and refractory people, fickle and disbelieving, unworthy of all the good that God has brought into their lives. This interpretation, as I have been trying to argue, is one-sided and, in my judgment, hogwash. And, to make my point yet further, I would argue that God learns from this story...

IV. What God Learns from this Encounter

We often emphasize what we learn from our difficulties in life and thank God for it. Indeed, the wisdom we derive from our past difficulties is truly one of the divine gifts to us. But we never ask the corresponding question, 'What does God learn from the encounter?' Perhaps we feel this is an inappropriate question, a question that arises from the arrogance of the human who needs simply to bow to the will of the Creator. But when you begin to ask questions like this, sometimes you get answers--answers that you don't expect.

My last point today is that God learns from this encounter--primarily in the form in which God later speaks to the people of Israel. What I mean is this. In two instances in this text the word rib is used. It is translated as "complaint" or "quarrel." The people complained against Moses and wondered about the water. But what is significant is that the method the people used in approaching Moses became, by the time of the prophetic literature, a major method God used in upbraiding the people. Let me give you a few examples.

First, we have this, from the prophecy of Isaiah:

"13 The Lord rises to argue his case;
he stands to judge the peoples.
14 The Lord enters into judgement
with the elders and princes of his people:
It is you who have devoured the vineyard;
the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts," Is. 3:13-15.

Then, we have another, and longer, example from Micah.

"Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth;
for the Lord has a controversy with his people,
and he will contend with Israel.
3 ‘O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
and redeemed you from the house of slavery;
and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord,'" Mic. 6:1-5.

Scholars who have spent a lot of time studying the prophetic literature have isolated a literary form, called the rib or covenant lawsuit, in which God reproaches the people in legal terms for their behavior. God, as it were, brings the divine complaint, and then leaves it in the people's lap for a response. My point is simple. God learned how to refine a complaint (rib) by first hearing the people complain in their own rib. God decided that the people had such a good idea that God adopted it for the divine communication.

Conclusion

Thus, what this narrative ultimately does is to undermine its very point. The "point" it tries to make is that the people of Israel were to be blamed for their unfaithful behavior at Massah/Meribah. But, in fact, by reading between the lines of the controversy, and realizing that God picked up on the people's method later on in the sacred history, we see the text undermining itself. In fact, the people are the heroes of this story, and God is the learner. Moses, well, he is just the guy who equates himself with God and really shouldn't be very honored at all for his role.

So, maybe this text now gives us insight into how to celebrate Lent in 2008. Give up the self-examination and personal reproach. Don't worry about the disobedience. Complain if you really are owed something. Maybe God will learn something in 2008 if you live this way.

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