Waters of Meribah

Waters of Meribah is the name given to the place at Kadesh in the Wilderness of Zin where the Israelites, finding no water, quarreled with the LORD, and where Moses and Aaron were told they would not bring the assembly into the land (Numbers 20:1-2, 12-13; Numbers 27:14). The episode came near the end of the forty years in the wilderness, for Aaron died at the next camp, Mount Hor, in the fortieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt (Numbers 14:33; 33:37-38).

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Biblical Account

The congregation came into the Wilderness of Zin in the first month and stayed at Kadesh, where Miriam died and was buried (Numbers 20:1). With no water to drink, the people gathered against Moses and Aaron, wishing they had died with their brothers and asking why they had been brought out of Egypt to a place without grain, figs, vines or pomegranates (Numbers 20:2-5). Moses and Aaron went to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the LORD appeared to them (Numbers 20:6). The LORD told Moses to take the staff and assemble the congregation, and to speak to the rock with Aaron while the people watched, so that it would give water for them and their livestock (Numbers 20:7-8). Moses took the staff, gathered the assembly before the rock and said to them (Numbers 20:9-10), “Listen now, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” He then raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff, and a great amount of water gushed out, so that the congregation and their livestock could drink (Numbers 20:11). The LORD then told Moses and Aaron that because they had not trusted Him to show His holiness in the sight of the Israelites, they would not bring the assembly into the land He had given them (Numbers 20:12).

When the people had set out from Kadesh and reached Mount Hor, the LORD said that Aaron would die without entering the land because both had rebelled against His command at the waters of Meribah, and Aaron died on the mountain after his priestly garments were put on his son Eleazar (Numbers 20:22-28). Numbers 27:14 recalls the same rebellion against the LORD's command at the waters of Meribah in Kadesh, in the Wilderness of Zin. Moses later pleaded to cross over and was refused (Deuteronomy 3:23-27), and after the LORD showed him the land from Mount Nebo, he died there in Moab (Deuteronomy 34:1-5). Deuteronomy 32:51 describes what happened at the waters of Meribah-kadesh as breaking faith with the LORD and failing to treat Him as holy in the Israelites' presence. In Psalm 106 the people angered the LORD at the waters of Meribah and trouble came to Moses because of them, for they rebelled against His Spirit and Moses spoke rashly (Psalm 106:32-33). Psalm 81 recalls the LORD saying, “I tested you at the waters of Meribah” (Psalm 81:7), and the blessing of Levi speaks of the one “whom You tested at Massah and contested at the waters of Meribah” (Deuteronomy 33:8).

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Two Places Named Meribah

An earlier quarrel over water took place at Rephidim, where the LORD told Moses to strike the rock at Horeb, and Moses named the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and tested the LORD (Exodus 17:1-7); at Kadesh he was told instead to speak to the rock (Numbers 20:8). Noel Osborn and Howard Hatton, in A Handbook on Exodus (United Bible Societies, 1999), give the meanings of the two names as “testing” for Massah and “complaining” for Meribah. Lénart de Regt and Ernst Wendland, in A Handbook on Numbers (United Bible Societies, 2016), note that the name Meribah comes from the same Hebrew root as the verb for the quarreling in Numbers 20:13, and the name Kadesh from the same root as the verb in “He showed His holiness among them”.

The rock that gave water to the wilderness generation points forward to Christ: “they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4).