Numbers 20:2-9 - Speak to the rock

20:2-5

We are now going to get two more incidents of disobedience. One is of the people grumbling, and then Moses failing to obey God properly. “Now there was no water for the congregation”. This is not the first time that this has happened (Ex 17:1). The people had failed to learn the lesson from the previous incident, and later we will see that Moses had learnt, if anything, the wrong lesson. The people should have learnt that God provides. Instead of grumbling they should have asked God, or at least have asked Moses to ask God for water. The same applies to us. When we go through incidents in our lives where we experience God’s rescuing us in some situation or other, we should learn from it. We should learn that God will provide. As it says in 2 Cor 1:10, “He delivered us ..., and He will deliver us”. As usual, the Israelites complain that Moses had ever rescued them from slavery in Egypt. 

20:6-9

There will be times when it may seem that God has left us in the lurch, or that He has forgotten us, or overlooked some vital factor. He has not. Moses and Aaron do, initially, react in the right way. They go to the tent of meeting and fall on their faces before the Lord. The glory of the Lord appears to them and speaks to them. Moses is to take the staff, assemble the people, and tell the rock to yield water. The key thing here is that Moses was not told to strike the rock, unlike in Ex 17:6. The purpose of this was not just to provide water, but also to demonstrate more of the power of God to the people. Also the authority that God gave to Moses.