Moses found the Israelites revolting

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

 

Aaron hilariously (if it weren’t so serious) replies (Exodus 32:24):

“So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’, and they gave it to me.

When I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!’”

As if the end result were pure accident.

  

Introduction

 

Once mighty Egypt, now - following on from the devastating Plagues and the Exodus - would cease to be a power for a long time, virtually disappearing from the Bible for roughly half a millennium. And, despite the fact that the Exodus Israelites had, in their first encounter with an enemy, defeated the Amalekites at Rephidim (Beer Karkom), the Amalekites would continue for that period of time to be a dominant power in the land of Canaan.

They may well even have overrun fallen Egypt, as the warlike Hyksos people, referred to by some (e.g. Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky) as Egypt’s “Eleventh Plague”.

 

The great man, Moses, who had been commissioned to leave his settled existence in the land of Midian in order to lead his people out of the House of Bondage (Egypt), now found himself carrying on his shoulders a people who continued to be ungrateful and rebellious.

 

The burden would be eased to some extent by his sage Midianite father-in-law, Jethro, advising him to delegate responsibilities, so as not to exhaust himself (Exodus 18:18): ‘You’re going to wear yourself out—and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself’.

 

Returning back to Mount Sinai, Moses will receive from the hand of Almighty God the Ten Commandments, and he will be given a code of Laws: all included in the Torah.

 

This important set of regulations will be emulated by nations down through the ages.

 

For example, the famous Hammurabi, King of Babylon, wretchedly mis-dated and thought to have influenced Moses - but actually reigning centuries later than Moses, at the time of King Solomon - will depict himself as receiving from the hands of his god, Shamash, the famous Law Code, which includes the lex talionis (“eye for an eye”).

 

The Spartans, for their part, have totally appropriated Moses in their famed Lawgiver, the, albeit fictitious, Lycurgus.

 

The young warrior, Joshua, who had “defeated Amalek and his army with the sword” (Exodus 17:13), was fast becoming Moses’s right-hand man, even accompanying him up the sacred mountain (24:13-14).

Aaron and Hur, and other elders, were instructed to “bow in worship at a distance” (24:1). Would this be taken as a slight, prompting later rebellion?

 

Moses was also given instructions to build the Tabernacle, the model for the later Temple built by King Solomon in Jerusalem, and the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25), and to include other liturgical features and offerings (Book of Leviticus), such as the priestly garments, so beautifully described much later by Sirach 45:6-17:

 

The Lord raised up Aaron, a holy man like his brother Moses, of the tribe of Levi. He made an eternal covenant with him, giving him the privilege of serving as priest to the Lord's people. He honored him by clothing him with magnificent robes and fine ornaments, perfect in their splendor. He granted him the symbols of authority: the linen shorts, the shirt, and the robe with the pomegranates around the hem. Gold bells were also around its hem, so that when he walked, their ringing would be heard in the Temple, and the Lord would remember his people. The Lord gave Aaron the sacred robe with the gold, blue, and purple embroidery; the breastpiece with the Urim and Thummim; the red yarn, spun by an expert; the precious stones with names engraved on them, mounted in a gold setting by a jeweler, placed on the breastpiece to remind the Lord of the twelve tribes of Israel. He gave him the turban with the gold ornament engraved with the words Dedicated to the Lord. It was expertly crafted, a beautiful work of art, and it was a high honor to wear it. Before Aaron's time such beautiful things were never seen. No one but Aaron and his descendants ever wore them, or ever will. The grain offering is to be presented twice a day and burned completely.

 

Moses ordained Aaron to office by pouring the sacred anointing oil over his head. An eternal covenant was made with him and his descendants, that they would serve the Lord as his priests and bless the people in the Lord's name. The Lord chose Aaron out of the whole human race to offer sacrifices, to burn fragrant incense to remind the Lord of his people, and to take away their sins. He entrusted the commandments to Aaron's keeping and gave him the authority to make legal decisions and to teach Israel the Law.

 

As I. Kikawada and A. Quinn would point out in their classic, Before Abraham Was. The Unity of Genesis, 1-11 (1984), Moses was presenting himself here as a ‘new Noah’, an Ark builder, covenant maker, etc.

 

Though no legend supports it, so I believe, it would be a nice symmetry if Karkom were the place where Noah, too, had built an Ark.

 

We read in a previous article, “Brilliant reconstruction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness”, how engineer Flavio Barbiero and his brother were able to reconstruct to exact specifications, from the imprint that it has left at Karkom, the Tabernacle that Moses had built.

 

See Flavio Barbiero’s book on this (2025), and his article:

 

THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB

 

(14) THE CAVE OF TREASURES ON MOUNT HOREB

 

Now the troubles will really begin.

 

Israel’s Revolts

 

(i)      The Golden Calf

 

With Moses spending long periods of time with the Lord on the holy mountain, the briefly gruntled Israelites were now becoming totally disgruntled, dissatisfied and rebellious (Exodus 32:1): “When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round Aaron and said to him, ‘Come, make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt – we don’t know what has happened to him!’”

 

Joshua, ever staying close to Moses, would have no part in any of this.

 

The story of the Golden Calf is well known.

I would just like to recall the ridiculously lame excuse given by Aaron when confronted by his angry brother Moses (Exodus 32:21): “Then Moses asked Aaron, ‘What did these people do to you that you have led them into such a grave sin?’”

 

Aaron hilariously (if it weren’t so serious) replies (Exodus 32:24): “So I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’, and they gave it to me. When I threw it into the fire, out came this calf!’” As if the end result were pure accident.

 

For me, Aaron’s comment ranks with two other occasions of Old Testament humour, whether intended or not.

 

One, Gideon, the Israelite warrior, and leader of 300, who has been appropriated into Greek folklore as Leonidas and the 300 (Gid-eon Grecised to [N]id[as]-[L]-eon).

 

Gideon, under fierce pressure from the Midianites and the Amalekites, fires back (though respectfully) at the Lord, who had just said through his angel (Judges 6:12): ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior’, to the effect that, ‘If you are with us, Lord, then why are we copping this shellacking’?

 

Two, the remark made by the Philistine king of Gath, Achish, ‘… am I so short of madmen …?’, when David, who had been forced to flee the wrath of King Saul, feigned madness, dribbling and scratching at the doors of Gath.

 

“Achish said to his servants, ‘Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?’” (I Samuel 21:14-15).

 

After Moses had, by the agency of armed Levites, slaughtered about 3000 of the rebels, the Lord weighed in by sending a plague upon the Israelites (Exodus 32:27-35).

 

Moses will be consoled not long afterwards by encountering the Glory of the Lord (Exodus 33:18-23).

 

When, in Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, Moses states to Israel that:

 

‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you’, he was not, as certain Moslem apologists hopefully insist - to deflect from its proper fulfilment in Jesus Christ (Acts 3:22) - referring to natural similarities, such as being married, having children, leading battles, and so on.

No, Moses was referring to his being empowered to speak “face to face with God” (Exodus 33:11).

 

Mohammed was unable to do this - well, for one, because he never actually existed!

See e.g. my article:

 

Zakir Naik’s apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians

 

(14) Zakir Naik's apologetical tactic meant to embarrass Christians

 

After all of the liturgical items (Ark of the Covenant, Tabernacle, vestments, etc., etc.) had been completed, the Glory of the Lord (popularly known as the Shekinah) filled the Tabernacle.

Later it would fill the Temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon (2 Chronicles 7:1).

 

The new Israelite liturgy was soon in full swing.

 

(ii)    Miriam and Aaron oppose Moses

 

Numbers 12:1-3

 

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite. ‘Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?’ they asked. ‘Hasn’t he also spoken through us?’ And the Lord heard this.

 

(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.)

 

Joseph of Egypt, likewise much favoured by the Lord, had experienced the same sort of jealousy from his older siblings.

 

For this, the Lord struck Miriam leprous.

Moses immediately interceded for her and she was healed (vv. 10-15).

 

Because Moses had a “Cushite wife” - and perhaps because of legends having Moses leading Egyptian armies into Ethiopia (Cush) - commentators can argue that the wife of Moses, Zipporah, was actually a dark skinned African.

 

We know, however, that she was a Semitic Midianite.

And Flavio Barbiero, again (op. cit.), has explained, with reference to Habakkuk 3:7: “I saw the tents of Cushan in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish”, that Cush- was also a term associated with Midian.

 

Aaron and Miriam may have been put off by her foreignness. Even though Zipporah’s Midianite people, too, were Abrahamic, their practices did not always conform to those of Israel. For instance, Moses got himself into serious trouble with the Lord for failing to circumcise his son, Gershom (Exodus 4:24-26) - he no doubt bowing to pressure from his Midianite relatives whose practice was to circumcise late, before marriage.

 

(iii) Korah’s rebellion

 

Numbers 16:1-4

 

Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men: And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?

And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face:

 

Here, again, led by a Levite, Korah, are those rotten, revolting, Reubenite rascals, Dathan and Abiram, whom we met already back in Egypt as troublemakers for Moses. They are the Jannes and Jambres (Mambres) whom Saint Paul will much later excoriate as “men of depraved minds” (2 Timothy 3:8).

 

Some of these various opposers of Moses may have been men of high standing in Egypt’s mighty Twelfth Dynasty, so-called.

One or other of the two brothers is supposed to have said to Moses (Exodus 2:14): ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ Moses, as the important Mentuhotep, was, indeed, a “ruler” (Vizier) and (Chief) “judge” at this particular time.

 

Like Aaron’s sons (Leviticus 10:1-2): “But Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censor and put fire in it and put incense upon it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. Therefore, a fire went out from the LORD and devoured them. So they died before the LORD”, these wicked men, Korah, Dathan, Abiram, etc. would suffer a terrible, fiery fate.

 

 

Pharaoh Sneferu

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

“Snofru soon became a legendary figure, and literature in later periods credited him with a genial personality”.

 

“Cheops ... is portrayed in [Papyrus Westcar] as the traditional legendary oriental monarch, good-natured …”.

 

Nicolas Grimal

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Throughout various articles now I have concluded that the ancient Egyptian dynasty that oppressed the Israelites at the time of Moses consisted of only four rulers, with the other names being duplicates, or triplicates. These rulers were, in order:

 

1.       The “new king” of Exodus 1:8, who began the Oppression of Israel;

2.       Moses, presumed son of 1., who ruled briefly and who then abdicated;

3.      “Chenephres” of tradition, married to “Merris’ of tradition, the Egyptian foster-mother of Moses; and, lastly, a

4.      Female Pharaoh.

 

And I have further concluded that the life of the historical Moses actually spans two kingdoms (Old and ‘Middle’), conventionally speaking, and five dynasties (4^th; 5^th; 6^th; 12^th and 13^th).

 

As was the case with Joseph, son of Jacob, the life of Moses starkly reveals the inadequacies of the received Egyptian dynastic history and completely reforms it.

 

Here we are concerned only with Egypt’s so-called 4^th dynasty, the Giza pyramid and Sphinx building dynasty.

 

Fourth Dynasty of Egypt

 

My re-setting of ancient Egypt via Moses necessitates an alteration to the first part of the Fourth Dynasty king list (1-4):

 

1 Sneferu

2 Khufu

3 Djedefre

4 Khafre

 

Four kings now needing to become three.

 

While kings 2-4 here now become fairly straightforward, 1. Sneferu (Snofru) I have found to be something of an outlier.

 

2. Khufu (Cheops), whose daughter Meresankh married 4. Khafre (Chephren), is clearly the oppressive “new king” of Exodus 1:8, the dynastic founder, with Meresankh being “Merris”, the traditional (Artapanus) foster-mother of Moses, who married “Chenephres”, 4. Khafre (Chephren).

 

That leaves 3. Djedefre, the presumed son of Khufu, as the brief-reigning Moses.

 

Sneferu (Snofru)

 

1.                   Sneferu, a long-reigning king, can thus immediately be ruled out as Moses.

 

Arguments could be mounted for Sneferu (“a genial personality”) to have been Cheops, “good-natured” (though tell that to the Israelites groaning under his oppression), or Sneferu, who was likewise (as was Khafre) associated with a Meresankh.

 

Previously I had written on this, following Nicolas Grimal (A History of Ancient Egypt, 1992):

 

Meresankh (“Merris”)

 

P. 170

 

Snofru is also associated with a Meresankh, though she is considered to be his mother.

P. 67 [She was] one of Huni’s concubines. There is no definite proof of this ....

 

Meresankh will become something of a golden thread, linking the traditional “Merris” of Moses’ childhood to the 4^th Dynasty …. 

 

Likenesses to Cheops

 

This (somewhat semi-legendary) ruler, Sneferu, seems to me to connect well with Cheops in various ways. For instance (the pages are taken from N. Grimal’s A History of Ancient Egypt):

 

Great “legendary” reputation – good natured

 

P. 67

 

.... Snofru soon became a legendary figure, and literature in later [?] periods credited him with a genial personality. He was even deified in the Middle Kingdom, becoming the ideal king who later Egyptian rulers … sought to emulate when they were attempting to legitimize their power.  

 

P. 70

 

Cheops ... is portrayed in [Papyrus Westcar] as the traditional legendary oriental monarch, good-natured, and eager to be shown magical things, amiable towards his inferiors and interested in the nature of human existence.

Cult figure

 

P. 67

 

Snofru’s enviable reputation with later rulers, which according to the onomastica was increased by his great popularity with the people, even led to the restoration of Snofru’s mortuary temple at Dahshur. P. 69 ... cult among Middle Kingdom miners in the Sinai.

P. 165 There is even evidence of a Twelfth Dynasty cult of Snofru in the region of modern Ankara.

 

P. 70

 

Cheops was not remembered as fondly as Snofru, although his funerary cult was still attested in the Saite (Twenty-Sixth) Dynasty and he was increasingly popular in the Roman period. According to Papyrus Westcar, he liked to listen to fantastic stories of the reigns of his predecessors.

 

Like his potential alter ego Cheops,

P. 67 [Snofru’s] reign  ... appears to have been both glorious and long-lasting (perhaps as much as forty years).

 

Snofru built

... ships, fortresses, palaces and temples ...

Three pyramids.

 

If Snofru were Cheops, as I am thinking, then Snofru’s three pyramids - built perhaps early in his reign - would have been the perfect preparation for his later masterpiece, the Great Pyramid at Giza:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneferu

“Under Sneferu [Snofru], there was a major evolution in monumental pyramid structures, which would lead to Khufu's Great Pyramid, which would be seen as the pinnacle of the Egyptian Old Kingdom's majesty and splendour, and as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”.

 

Less positive picture of the king   

 

P. 71

 

... it is difficult to accommodate within this theory [building immoderation = unpopularity] the fact that Snofru’s reputation remained untarnished when he built more pyramids than any of his successors.

 

Pp. 69-70

 

[Cheops’] pyramid transforms him into the very symbol of absolute rule, and Herodotus’ version of events chose to emphasise his cruelty:

https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh2120.htm

 

124. ... Cheops became king over them and brought them to every kind of evil: for he shut up all the temples, and having first kept them from sacrificing there, he then bade all the Egyptians work for him. So some were appointed to draw stones from the stone-quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile, and others he ordered to receive the stones after they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those which are called the Libyan mountains; and they worked by a hundred thousand men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid; for the length of it is five furlongs and the breadth ten fathoms and the height, where it is highest, eight fathoms, and it is made of stone smoothed and with figures carved upon it. For this, they said, the ten years were spent, and for the underground chambers on the hill upon which the pyramids stand, which he caused to be made as sepulchral chambers for himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the Nile.

 

For the making of the pyramid itself there passed a period of twenty years; and the pyramid is square, each side measuring eight hundred feet, and the height of it is the same. It is built of stone smoothed and fitted together in the most perfect manner, not one of the stones being less than thirty feet in length.

 

Moreover:

 

126. Cheops moreover came, they said, to such a pitch of wickedness, that being in want of money he caused his own daughter to sit in the stews, and ordered her to obtain from those who came a certain amount of money (how much it was they did not tell me); but she not only obtained the sum appointed by her father, but also she formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her a memorial, and she requested each man who came in to her to give her one stone upon her building: and of these stones, they told me, the pyramid was built which stands in front of the great pyramid in the middle of the three, each side being one hundred and fifty feet in length. ….

 

Following Middle Bronze I Israel after the Exodus from cruel Egypt

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

  

The people of Israel had witnessed the miraculous and had the miraculous ever before them in the form of the Glory Cloud (popularly known as the Shekinah).

  

Introduction

 

After the miraculous Exodus from Egypt, a sign that was meant to be remembered down through the generations (cf. Deuteronomy 6:6-7), Moses and his people sang of the Lord’s power and glory (Exodus 15:1-21).

 

Moses, so eager when in Egypt to free his people - but having succumbed to the comforts of married life during his long sojourn in Midian, hoping that the Lord might consider someone else for the daunting task - was now fully reconciled again to what the Lord was asking from him.

Family life seems to have become a matter of secondary importance – though there will soon be a moment of controversy regarding his Midianite wife, Zipporah.

 

But it would not be long before the people of Moses, the Israelites, despite all that had recently happened, took to their customary grumbling again. Only 2 verses into the next chapter of the Book of Exodus do we read (16:2-3):

 

In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death’.

 

At the forefront of this would be that ungrateful Reubenite pair, Dathan and Abiram (“Jannes and Jambres” as St. Paul would much later call them, 2 Timothy 3:8).

 

Some fellow Levites would also rise up in rebellion against Moses.

 

And so, even, would Moses’ own older brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam.

 

God detests ingratitude.

 

Psalm 105:21-25 (Douay version) sums up what the Lord had done for Israel and how ungrateful Israel had repaid Him:

 

They forgot God, who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, Wondrous works in the land of Cham: terrible things in the Red Sea. And he said that he would destroy them: had not Moses his chosen stood before him in the breach: To turn away his wrath, lest he should destroy them. And they set at nought the desirable land. They believed not his word, And they murmured in their tents: they hearkened not to the voice of the Lord.

 

The C20th world, too, had forgotten God, prompting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to recall the old lament: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened”.

 

 

Still, we have forgotten Him, hence our world gone utterly mad.

 

The people of Israel had witnessed the miraculous and had the miraculous ever before them in the form of the Glory Cloud (popularly known as the Shekinah).

 

The Gentile nations, aware of all of this, were also meant to acknowledge the might and power of the Lord. When they didn’t, when peoples like the Amalekites, the Ammonites and the Moabites, the giant king Og of Bashan, hindered Israel on its path to the Promised Land, the Lord rose up in fury against these as well.

 

The historical context

 

As I have noted previously:

My purpose has been, not so much theological and interpretive, as an effort to show that the Bible is real history, with a firm archaeology (and sometimes geology) underpinning the whole of it.

Geographical corrections have also proven to be a crucial part of this task.

 

Possibly no other part of the Bible lends itself more satisfactorily to an archaeological investigation than does the Exodus and Joshuan Conquest.

It should be - and indeed is - in plain sight. 

 

Sadly however, as we have read, the yoking of the Bible to an overblown chronology (by the likes of Dr. Albright and Fr. Louis Hugues-Vincent) has resulted in the massive amount of archaeological evidence for the Exodus and the Conquest becoming completely overlooked, with a different (and totally unsuitable) era preferred by the experts.

 

As we have determined, Moses departed Midian not long after the termination of the cruelly oppressive Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt, whose last ruler, briefly, was a female. Moses and Aaron would now face the Thirteenth Dynasty pharaoh, a man of military background, Neferhotep I. Archaeologically, it was this providential point in time, when workmen are found to have abandoned their sites at places like Illahûn, that Egyptianised ‘Asiatics’ (the fleeing Israelites) would depart from Egypt, later to be replaced by Non-Egyptianised ‘Asiatics’, the Hyksos invaders.

 

These, we shall probably meet as the Amalekites.

 

Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had called the Hyksos invasion of a greatly weakened Egypt “the Eleventh Plague”.

 

Grumbling Israel

 

The manna with which the Lord would so providentially feed in abundance the grumbling Israelites was almost certainly not a purely miraculous phenomenon, like the quails which also came, since both have been experienced in this desert region.

 

Rightly, though, the manna has become a symbol of the Blessed Eucharist.

 

Later, the famous image of the bronze serpent suspended on a pole will become a symbol of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and will be biblically interpreted as such (John 3:14): ‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him’.

 

Return to Mount Sinai

 

The Exodus route taken by the Israelites to Mount Sinai, and the identification of the mountain, have become the topic of interest of countless articles and videos.

 

But no two of these seem to agree. 

 

Immediately to be rejected are those interpretations that do not take into consideration that a great mass of nomadic people wandering in desert regions would be in need of regular drinking water stopping points, wells, along the way.

 

The beauty of professor Emmanuel Anati’s proposed Exodus route is that it has been determined by one who has had decades of archaeological experience in the regions and has duly taken into account the need for drinking water, not to mention the location of the tribes mentioned in the Exodus account: Midian, Amalek, etc.

 

Previously, it has been suggested that a location of the Sea of Reeds closer to Egypt than Anati’s Lake Serbonis would be preferable, and that – while his location of Israel’s encampment in the Karkom Valley appears to fit very well indeed – the holy mountain may not actually be his choice of Har Karkom there, but rather a mysterious mountain right in the centre of the Karkom Valley, as identified by professor Anati’s colleague, Flavio Barbiero.

 

Both the professor and Flavio Barbiero appear to be in harmony, though, with the location of Rephidim and its important water source (they locate it at Beer Karkom), about which we next read (Exodus 17:1-7):

 

The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water to drink’.

Moses replied, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?’

But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, ‘Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst’?

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me’.

The Lord answered Moses, ‘Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink’. So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’

 

Israel’s grumbling had become so insistent that places were even named after it.