Jehovah Ropheca

The years of wilderness wandering are a tragic period in the history of Israel. The greatest tragedy of those years does not, perhaps, lie in the trail of graves that marked the fulfilment of the divine judgement as the carcasses of the disobedient fell in the wilderness. Sad though that trail of death undoubtedly was, there was a deeper sadness to the story of thirty-eight wasted years when Israel could have been, and should have been, in the land, possessing the inheritance that God had promised her. The deepest tragedy of all was that it did not need to be like this, that God had never intended it to be like this. The tragedy of their wasted years is the tragedy of ours. God does not want us to waste our time in wilderness wanderings; it is our unbelief and disobedience that prevent our progress, keep us on the wrong side of Jordan and out of the land where a rich inheritance of blessing awaits our possession. It does not have to be like this.

Of course, not all of Israel’s wilderness experience was wasted. While God had not intended them to spend years in wandering, He had brought them out of Egypt into the wilderness and, in the nation’s first journey to Kadesh-Barnea, we see God carrying out a deliberate and focused programme of education. We see this in a particularly focused way in the three months that it took the nation to travel from the Red Sea to Sinai. In that brief period, and with Sinai and its covenant in view, God gave His people a crash course in what it meant to live with the presence, the power, and the provision of God. On the shores of the Red Sea, at Marah and Elim, in the wilderness, at Rephidim, and in battle against Amalek, Israel learned the reality and the range of God’s multi-faceted, variegated ability to succour His own in any circumstance. And, as we look at the record of His provision, we can see, in all the variety, a consistency that was not, perhaps, so readily apparent to Israel. At Marah, in the manna, and in the rock that bore the stroke of Moses’ rod, we learn the lesson that all of God’s provision for His people’s passage is found in the person of Christ, the true bread that came down from heaven, John 6. 32, the rock from which the nation drank, 1 Cor. 10. 4, and the One who has the power to bring sweet water from bitter.

God’s response to His people’s circumstances was gloriously consistent; theirs was marked by a dismal predictability. Marah set the template. Scarcely had the rejoicing strains of the Song of the Sea faded away before they were replaced with the murmuring of the people against Moses - and against God. In Numbers chapter 11, their murmuring would bring down devastating judgement on ‘the uttermost parts of the camp’, but here it elicits only God’s gracious provision. This contrast in God’s response may reflect the fact that one of these episodes of murmuring took place before Sinai, the other after; a solemn reminder that ‘the “sins of the saints” are graver than the “sins of the sinners”’.¹ It may be too that the people murmur here in response to a real need. Numbers chapter 11 tells us nothing about the catalyst for their complaint and gives no indication that it was in any way justified. Similarly, in Numbers chapter 21, where the Lord sends fiery serpents in response to the people’s murmuring, it is the fact that they are complaining not about their need but about God’s provision (a provision that speaks of Christ) that makes their offence especially egregious. Here, the people had journeyed three days and had to cope, not just with the very real difficulty of diminishing - or depleted - supplies, but with the disappointment of finding only bitter and undrinkable water. But even these adverse and alarming circumstances could not justify murmuring, with its connotations of obstinate complaint. Moses’ response shows us the better way - faced with insurmountable difficulty, he ‘cried unto the Lord’, Exod. 15. 25. Israel had not chosen the difficult circumstances in which she found herself. The waters of Marah were not a punishment for disobedience. God Himself had brought them to the place called ‘Bitterness’. But at that place, and in those circumstances, God ‘proved them’, for while the circumstances were beyond their control, their response was not and between the murmuring of the people and the crying of Moses there was a significant difference. We should note it well, for it is easy for us to murmur at our circumstances, nurturing a sense of grievance in our hearts, when the true path to blessing is that exemplified by Moses and exhorted by Peter, ‘Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you’, 1 Pet. 5. 7.

Moses did not cry in vain. ‘The Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet’, v. 25. The account is striking in its compression - we are not told whether God told Moses to cast the tree into the water, though it seems a reasonable inference that He did so. The result of this is to focus our attention upon the tree as that which makes bitter water sweet. And it does so, surely, not so that we can engage in botanical speculation to identify a naturalistic cause for the effect of the sweetened water, but so that we, for whose admonition these things were written, 1 Cor. 10. 11, might be reminded of that unique tree that has made bitterness sweet. Calvary’s centre tree, ‘cast into’ the most unpleasant circumstances of life, still has the power to make the bitter waters sweet and refreshing. ‘Beauteous figure this of Him Who was, in infinite grace, cast into the bitter waters of death, in order that those waters might yield nought but sweetness to us for ever’.² Israel’s exodus from Egypt had begun with a rod that made water undrinkable; her journey into the wilderness begins with a tree that had the reverse effect.

Even Moses might have wondered why God would lead His people, so early in their journey, to so inhospitable a place. ‘The name of it was called Marah’, says verse 23, indicating that its bitter waters were well-known. Verse 25 gives us the answer, ‘there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them’. God was testing His people. Like all divine testing, this was demonstrative rather than diagnostic, designed to reveal to Israel what God already knew about them. Israel’s experience was what Peter (speaking to ‘strangers and pilgrims’) calls ‘the trial of your faith’, 1 Pet. 1. 7. Faith in God had brought this people safely through the Passover and out of Egypt. Now, in their wilderness journey, they must learn that the One who had met their need once-for-all in redemption could daily meet their need in provision and preservation. That lesson seems so obvious in the abstract, and yet few of us could deny that we have had to learn it in our experience time, and time, and time again.

God’s testing is both probing and pedagogical,³ and here, at Marah, He had a lesson for the people to learn, ‘a statute and an ordinance’ to teach them. Scripture speaks more frequently of ‘statutes and ordinances’, in the plural, and at Sinai, in the law, Israel would receive a multiplicity of divine instructions. Here a singular statute is in view, and verse 26 tells us what it is, ‘If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee’.⁴ On the banks of the Red Sea, Israel had felt the shackles of their bondage to Egypt fall from them. Now, as they embark on the journey into the wilderness, they must learn that, to use the important distinction that Paul draws in Galatians, they have liberty, but not licence. They had been set free from bondage to Pharaoh so that they could serve the Lord, their God.

Their obedience would bring blessing, in the form of preservation from ‘these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians’. Although the plagues upon Egypt are not elsewhere spoke of as diseases, the language suggests that it is these, especially, that God has in view. Whether it was the plagues or more general maladies common to Egypt, however, the promise of preservation was underwritten by a fresh revelation of the character and the power of God: Jehovah Ropheca, ‘the Lord that healeth thee’.

That revelation may have jarred the Israelites, and there are at least two reasons why it should capture our attention. God had promised to preserve them from the diseases of the Egyptians, but He now presents Himself as their healer. If He was going to preserve them, why would they need to be healed? Moreover, what they seemed really to need was a God who would take care of their circumstances, a God who would heal the bitter water and provide for their need. But in their murmuring, they had revealed a pathology that went beyond their circumstances and ran deeper than the diseases of Egypt. It was they who needed healing, not the water.

The lesson here is as important for us as it is for Israel. When challenging circumstances arise in our lives, our reflex is to look to God to solve the problem by changing the circumstances. Sometimes, in His grace, He does, but often He does not, because we need to be changed more than the circumstances do. This is the truth highlighted by the writer to the Hebrews as he speaks to believers who were in acute difficulties about their responsibility to ‘endure suffering as discipline’, Heb. 12. 7 CSB, to look for the lessons in adverse circumstances, to be exercised by them so that afterwards they might yield ‘the peaceable fruit of righteousness’, Heb. 12. 11. When we do that, we learn something of the gracious kindness of our Father, who is still Jehovah Ropheca, the God who heals us.