FROM THIS WEEK’S TORAH PORTION – CHUQQATH:

“And all the congregation of the children of Yisrael set out on their journey from the Wilderness of Sin, according to the mouth of YHWH, and camped in Rephiḏim. And there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore, the people strove with Moshe, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ And Moshe said to them, ‘Why do you strive with me? Why do you try YHWH?’ And the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moshe, and said, Why did you bring us out of Mitsrayim, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?’ Then Moshe cried out to YHWH, saying, ‘What am I to do with this people? Yet a little and they shall stone me!’ And YHWH said to Moshe, ‘Pass over before the people, and take with you some of the elders of Yisrael. And take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river, and go. See, I am standing before you there on the rock in Ḥorĕḇ. And you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people shall drink.’ And Moshe did so before the eyes of the elders of Yisrael. And he called the name of the place Massah and Meriḇah, because of the ‘strife’ of the children of Yisrael, and because they ‘tried’ YHWH, saying, ‘Is YHWH in our midst or not?’”

“For I do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were immersed into Moshe in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed, and the Rock was Messiah.”