🔢WEB · Numbers 20:13
What does Numbers 20:13 mean?
"These are the waters of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with Yahweh, and he was sanctified in them."
— Numbers 20:13 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels! Shall we bring water out of this rock for you?”
Moses lifted up his hand, and struck the rock with his rod twice, and water came out abundantly. The congregation and their livestock drank.
Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you didn’t believe in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
These are the waters of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with Yahweh, and he was sanctified in them.
Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, saying: “Thus says your brother Israel: You know all the travail that has happened to us;
how our fathers went down into Egypt, and we lived in Egypt a long time. The Egyptians mistreated us and our fathers.
When we cried to Yahweh, he heard our voice, sent an angel, and brought us out of Egypt. Behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the edge of your border.
Explanation
This verse comes at the close of a well-known and sobering episode in Israel's wilderness journey. The people had run out of water at a place near Kadesh, and rather than trusting God, they quarreled bitterly with Moses and Aaron, accusing them of leading them out of Egypt only to die in the desert. God told Moses to take his staff, gather the assembly, and speak to a rock so that water would flow from it. Instead,
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