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Exodus 17: What the Passage Says

60 claims across 16 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 17 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Israel travels from the Desert of Sin to Rephidim, where there is no water, and the people quarrel with Moses; the LORD tells Moses to strike a rock at Horeb, and water comes out for the people to drink. Moses names the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarreling and because the people tested the LORD, asking whether the LORD was among them. Amalek then attacks Israel at Rephidim; Joshua fights while Moses holds up his hand on the hill, with Aaron and Hur supporting his hands until sunset, and Joshua defeats Amalek. The LORD tells Moses to write this down and recite it to Joshua, and Moses builds an altar and names it Jehovah-nissi.

Claim by Claim

  1. 17:1
    • The whole congregation of the children of Israel set out from the wilderness of Sin.
    • They traveled by stages.
    • They traveled according to the command of the LORD.
    • They camped at Rephidim.
    • There was no water at Rephidim for the people to drink.
  2. 17:2
    • The people quarreled with Moses.
    • The people said, Give us water to drink.
    • Moses asked them why they were quarreling with him.
    • Moses asked them why they were testing the LORD.
  3. 17:3
    • The people were thirsty there for water.
    • The people grumbled against Moses.
    • The people asked why Moses had brought them up out of Egypt.
    • The people said Moses had brought them up to kill them and their children and their livestock with thirst.
  4. 17:4
    • Moses cried out to the LORD.
    • Moses asked what he should do with this people.
    • Moses said that in a little while they would stone him.
  5. 17:5
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to pass on ahead of the people.
    • The LORD told Moses to take with him some of the elders of Israel.
    • The LORD told Moses to take in his hand the staff with which he had struck the Nile.
    • The LORD told Moses to go.
  6. 17:6
    • The LORD said he would be standing before Moses there on the rock at Horeb.
    • The LORD told Moses to strike the rock.
    • The LORD said water would come out of the rock.
    • The LORD said the people would drink.
    • Moses did so.
    • Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
  7. 17:7
    • He named the place Massah and Meribah.
    • The name was given because of the quarreling of the children of Israel.
    • The name was given because they tested the LORD.
    • They had said, Is the LORD among us or not?
  8. 17:8
    • Amalek came.
    • Amalek fought with Israel at Rephidim.
  9. 17:9
    • Moses spoke to Joshua.
    • Moses told Joshua to choose men for them.
    • Moses told Joshua to go out and fight with Amalek.
    • Moses said that the next day he would station himself on the top of the hill.
    • Moses said he would have the staff of God in his hand.
  10. 17:10
    • Joshua did as Moses had said to him.
    • Joshua fought with Amalek.
    • Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
  11. 17:11
    • Whenever Moses raised his hand, Israel prevailed.
    • Whenever Moses let his hand down, Amalek prevailed.
  12. 17:12
    • Moses' hands were heavy.
    • They took a stone and put it under him.
    • Moses sat on the stone.
    • Aaron and Hur supported his hands.
    • One of them was on one side and the other on the other side.
    • His hands remained steady until the sun went down.
  13. 17:13
    • Joshua overpowered Amalek and his people.
    • Joshua did so with the edge of the sword.
  14. 17:14
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to write this as a memorial in the book.
    • The LORD told Moses to recite it in the ears of Joshua.
    • The LORD said he would utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.
  15. 17:15
    • Moses built an altar.
    • Moses named it The LORD Is My Banner.
  16. 17:16
    • Moses said that the LORD had sworn it.
    • The underlying wording is obscure, speaking of a hand upon the throne of the LORD, which the King James takes as an oath.
    • There is war for the LORD against Amalek from generation to generation.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

17:1
"The wilderness of Sin" has nothing to do with the English word sin; it is a place name in Hebrew (probably related to "Sinai"), a stretch of desert between Egypt and the mountain. Rephidim is a campsite whose location is no longer known. "The LORD" printed in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four consonants (YHWH), which English versions have traditionally replaced with this title.
17:2
In 1611 "chide" meant to quarrel with or bring an accusation against someone, and "tempt" meant simply to test or put to the proof, not, as now, to lure into wrongdoing. The Hebrew words behind them carry a legal flavor: the people are lodging a formal complaint against Moses.
17:3
"Cattle" in the King James covers all livestock, sheep and goats as well as cows. "Murmured" is stronger than mumbling under your breath: it is the standard word in these chapters for open, angry complaint against a leader, the kind that can turn into a revolt.
17:4
Stoning was how a community carried out an execution, everyone throwing at once so no single person was the killer. Moses is describing a crowd about to turn on him, not a threat of ordinary violence.
17:5
The "elders" were the senior heads of families who spoke for the people; the word describes a recognized position, not just old men. The staff is the same one Moses used to strike the Nile in the plague of blood (Exodus 7), so mentioning it recalls a rod already known to produce a public sign.
17:6
Horeb is another name for the mountain elsewhere called Sinai; the two names are used for the same place in the Hebrew Bible.
17:7
The two names are ordinary Hebrew words: Massah means "testing" and Meribah means "quarrelling" or "dispute." The verse is explaining that the place was named after what happened there, a wordplay that disappears when the names are left untranslated.
17:8
Amalek is used here as a single name for a whole people, the Amalekites, nomadic groups who ranged over the dry country south of Canaan and into Sinai, and who are elsewhere traced back to Esau. Ancient writers regularly name a nation after its ancestor, so "Amalek fought" means "the Amalekites fought."
17:9
This is the first appearance of Joshua, who acts throughout Exodus as Moses' assistant. "The staff of God" is the same rod named in verse 5, called that because it was the instrument through which God had acted, not because it was itself an object of worship.
17:10
Hur appears only a few times in the Bible, always alongside Aaron as one of the men left in charge when Moses was absent; nothing more is said of who he was.
17:11
Lifting the hands was the ordinary bodily posture for prayer in the ancient Near East, and a raised staff could also serve as a visible signal to troops in the field; the Hebrew leaves both senses open. Note that the King James has the singular "hand" here and "hands" in the next verse, following a shift in the Hebrew itself.
17:12
The King James "stayed up his hands" uses "stayed" in its older sense of propped up or held in place. It does not mean the modern "stayed," as in remained. Aaron and Hur are physically supporting Moses' arms because he can no longer hold them up himself.
17:13
"Discomfited" in the King James means overwhelmed or routed in battle, not merely disconcerted. "The edge of the sword" translates a Hebrew idiom that literally reads "the mouth of the sword", a standard phrase for killing in battle.
17:14
A "book" at this date meant a scroll of leather or papyrus, not bound pages. "Rehearse it in the ears of Joshua" means recite it aloud to him, the normal way a written record was passed on in a largely oral culture. Blotting a name "out from under heaven" draws on the practice of erasing writing from a document: to wipe out the name is to leave no record that the people ever existed.
17:15
Jehovah-nissi is untranslated Hebrew meaning "the LORD is my banner." A "banner" (Hebrew nes) was a pole or standard raised on high ground as a rallying point for troops or a signal visible at a distance. "Jehovah" is an older English rendering of the divine name YHWH, formed by combining its consonants with the vowels of another Hebrew word.
17:16
This verse is difficult in Hebrew and the wording is disputed. The text reads roughly "a hand upon the throne of YAH" (YAH being a short form of the divine name), and the word rendered "throne" is spelled unusually. A hand placed on something was the gesture that accompanied an oath, which is why the King James translators read it as "the LORD hath sworn"; other translators keep the literal "a hand was lifted toward the throne of the LORD" and leave whose hand it is unresolved.

Read Exodus 17