Exodus 15:22-23
They could not drink of the waters
Three days without water, then water that cannot be used. The place is named for the taste, and the name sticks to the event.
Places of the Bible
Marah and Elim
Three days after the song they found water they could not drink, and a day later more wells than they had people to use them.
The two places are six verses apart and the account puts them together on purpose. They go three days into the wilderness of Shur and find no water, which is already dangerous, and then they find water and it is bitter. The name they give the place is the problem: Marah means bitterness. The people murmur against Moses saying what shall we drink, which is not a theological question, it is the only question there is.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Marah and Elim
- 01
- 02
Exodus 15:24-25
The LORD shewed him a tree
The cure is something already growing there. The verse continues without a pause into a statute and an ordinance and a proving.
- 03
Exodus 15:26
I am the LORD that healeth thee
The first time this name is given it is attached to bitter water made drinkable, and to a condition about listening.
- 04
Exodus 15:27
Twelve wells and threescore and ten palm trees
The counting is the point. The next camp has more than enough, and the account records the abundance in numbers that match the family.
Why it matters
What is given at Marah is not only water. A tree is shown to Moses and cast in and the water turns sweet, and then, in the same breath, there is a statute and an ordinance and a test, and a name: I am the LORD that healeth thee. Then they come to Elim, and the account counts what is there with the precision of a man who had been thirsty: twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees, and they encamped there by the waters. Twelve wells for twelve tribes and seventy palms for the seventy who came down to Egypt.
1 song
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
