Exodus 17:1-7 - Thirsty Without Water

The Israelites’ world seems to continue falling apart as they make their way through the wilderness. In Exodus 17, they arrive at Rephidim, a place without water. The people are thirsty and begin crying out for something to drink. The story does not indicate how many days the Israelites were without water, but one hundred hours is often cited as the length of time a human body can typically survive at “average” temperatures without access to water. That is a little over four days.

According to Anathea Portier-Young, Old Testament professor at Duke Divinity School,

“In today’s Sinai Peninsula, the average high temperatures are 95° Fahrenheit in May and 104°F in June. In such extreme heat and with exposure to sun, the timeline for survival shortens considerably.”

Their thirst, therefore, is not a petty request or a light matter. Water is a serious issue for those weary, hot travelers.

When they find themselves without water, they cry out and question God.

They consider what good their trip out of Egypt might hold if they are only going to die of thirst in the midst of a dry desert. They begin to wonder about God’s presence among them.

In Exodus 17:7, they ask pointedly, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Notice how quickly the Israelites fall back into their former way of dualistic, win/lose, either/or thinking, asking why Moses brought them out of slavery in the first place: “Is God among us, leading us forward, or not? And if God is with us, then why is there no water?”

We can critique the Israelites, but we do well to acknowledge the raw honesty of their question, a question we would likely ask if we were in their situation. Indeed, many of us have asked a version of “Is God among us?” in the midst of our own experiences of pain and injustice:

If God is with us, why does our world seem to be falling apart right now?

If God is with us, why do I struggle with this addiction, illness, or disability?

If God is with us, why is the system stacked against me? Or against other marginalized communities?

If God is with us, why did I lose my loved one far too soon?

We can be tempted to fit our theology into these constraints of human logic. If X happens, then Y is not supposed to happen. If God is with us, then there is a lengthy list of things that are simply not supposed to happen. They do not fit into our “God equation.” On our own, we cannot reconcile how both could plausibly be true at the same time; it has to be one or the other to fit into the neat and tidy boxes of X and Y. Consequently, when Y does happen, the logical response is to re-examine X, and to ask the same question the Israelites ask in the wilderness, “Is the Lord among us, or not?

But notice that Moses is losing patience and is upset by the Israelites’ questions, not God. As we have named previously, God is familiar with the language of protest and lament – the raw vulnerability of God’s people crying out for what they need. In this instance, it is Moses, not God, who is upset by the people’s protest in the wilderness! When Moses brings the situation to God, he still doesn’t seem concerned for the people’s well-being or where they'll get something to drink. He doesn’t even ask God where his people can find water. Instead, afraid the people are going to kill him, he asks God what he should do about them.

Moses is more concerned about the people’s protesting than why they are protesting. He does not seem to want to solve their problem in the wilderness, but to keep them calm and under control. Does that sound familiar when you consider responses to modern-day protests for liberation or to the protests against police brutality toward our Black and brown communities? We have seen people more concerned about the methods of protesting than the injustices the protests represent.

In a 1967 speech presented at Stanford University, Martin Luther King, Jr declared, “In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?” He was not condoning riots in this speech but viewing them as a symptom of a people who are not heard. It may take effort to redirect our attention to the pain and suffering of lives as we seek to understand why people are marching in the streets. Why are they protesting?

God is paying attention to the “why,” to the need that motivates the Israelites’ protest. In Exodus 17:5, God tells Moses what to do next: to get water for the people in the wilderness. Valerie Bridgeman, a biblical scholar and professor at the Methodist Theological School of Ohio, paraphrases this story as follows:

“God says to Moses, ‘Grab some of the elders to go with you. Come on let’s go. You’ve seen this before. Take that staff. The thing that’s already in your hand. The one that you used at sea last time. Now go forward with that. And look ahead, because I’ll be standing there. I’ll be right in front of you. Strike the rock with the stick, and the people will have water to drink.’”

God reveals to Moses the next right thing to do. God reminds Moses of the resources around him and encourages him to use them in this moment. In the midst of an overwhelming situation, water appears in the wilderness; in a place lacking water, in the middle of the desert, and out of a rock, water flows freely. The people of God are not out of the wilderness yet, but they have what they need to make it through another day, their lives sustained in their life-threatening environment.

**This essay is a revised version of pages 88-91 in Hard and Holy Work: A Lenten Journey through the Book of Exodus, which I co-wrote with Mary Alice Birdwhistell.

A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)

Uncle Ishmael will be exploring the biblical book of Exodus in alignment with the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary begins on August 23 with Exodus 1 and concludes its journey through the book on October 11 with Exodus 32.

Here's a list of the Sundays and the Exodus scripture lesson:
October 4 2026 Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
October 11 2026 Exodus 32:1-14