Massah

Massah is the name Moses gave to the camp at Rephidim, in the wilderness between the wilderness of Sin and the wilderness of Sinai, where Israel found no water and demanded it of him (Exodus 17:1-7). The Hebrew name comes from the verb nasah, to test, and Exodus 17:7 pairs it with a second name, Meribah, quarreling, because the people quarreled and because they tested the Lord, saying, "Is the Lord among us or not?" The station is the same Rephidim at which the wilderness itinerary records that "there was no water for the people to drink" (Numbers 33:14) and from which Israel set out for the wilderness of Sinai in the third month after leaving Egypt (Exodus 19:1-2), which places the naming in 1446 BC.

Biblical Account

Israel moved by stages from the wilderness of Sin and camped at Rephidim (Exodus 17:1). The people said to Moses, "Give us water to drink," and asked why he had brought them out of Egypt to kill them, their children and their livestock with thirst (Exodus 17:2-3). Moses told the Lord the people were almost ready to stone him (Exodus 17:4). The Lord told him to pass on ahead with some of the elders, carrying the staff with which he had struck the Nile, and to strike the rock at Horeb; he did so in the sight of the elders and water came out (Exodus 17:5-6). The same camp is where Amalek attacked, Joshua led the fighting, and Aaron and Hur held up Moses's hands on the hill (Exodus 17:8-13).

Moses later held Massah up to the next generation as the warning example: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah" (Deuteronomy 6:16), and he listed it with Taberah and Kibroth Hattaavah among the places where Israel provoked the Lord (Deuteronomy 9:22). In his blessing of Levi he spoke of the tribe's "godly one, whom you tested at Massah, with whom you quarreled at the waters of Meribah" (Deuteronomy 33:8), a verse whose second clause uses the phrase the Pentateuch elsewhere gives to Kadesh, so it may reach back to both water quarrels. Psalm 95:8-9 calls the worshipper not to harden his heart "as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness," and in Psalm 81:7 the Lord himself says, "I tested you at the waters of Meribah," a phrase that elsewhere names the Kadesh episode, so which quarrel the psalm has in view is not settled.

Massah and the Two Meribahs

The Bible knows two water quarrels named Meribah. The first is the Rephidim episode of 1446 BC, where Massah and Meribah name one place (Exodus 17:7). The second is the Waters of Meribah at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin about 1407 BC, where Moses struck the rock twice and was barred from the land (Numbers 20:1-13). The later texts keep the two apart by adding the place: "the waters of Meribah of Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin" (Numbers 27:14; similarly Deuteronomy 32:51). The name Massah is never applied to Kadesh; where it appears it points back to Rephidim.

Geography and Identification

No site named Massah has been identified, and the location depends on where Rephidim and Mount Sinai are placed, which is debated among biblical archaeologists. The account requires a camp reached after the wilderness of Sin, within striking distance of Horeb (Exodus 17:6), and one stage short of the wilderness of Sinai (Exodus 19:2). On the traditional southern route, with Sinai at Jebel Musa, two candidates are proposed. The older view, argued by E. H. Palmer in the nineteenth century, places Rephidim in Wadi Feiran near its junction with Wadi esh Sheikh, the best watered valley of southern Sinai, with a palm grove stretching for miles along its floor; a well watered oasis would explain why Amalek fought for the ground. Others prefer Wadi Refayid, on the resemblance of the modern name to Rephidim. Both identifications are possible rather than probable. Proposals that move Sinai to Kadesh or to Midian east of the Gulf of Aqaba move Rephidim with it. The coordinates given here mark the Feiran oasis and carry the same uncertainty as the Rephidim debate itself.

Theological Significance

Massah is the Old Testament's own shorthand for putting God to the test, the demand for proof of his presence after his works have been seen (Psalm 95:9). Its place in Deuteronomy 6 puts the name in the same chapter as the command to love the Lord with all one's heart (Deuteronomy 6:5), and the pairing of testing and quarreling in Psalm 95 became the pattern the psalm's own hearers were warned not to repeat.