Chapter Overview
Summary
Exodus 17 narrates water from the rock at Massah/Meribah (vv. 1–7) and the war with Amalek (vv. 8–16). Both episodes supply NT vocabulary and typology: the rock is cited at 1 Corinthians 10:4 as 'a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ,' and the Massah/Meribah narrative is re-narrated in Psalm 95 (LXX 94) and cited at Hebrews 3:7–11 as the paradigm of wilderness-generation hardening. Exodus 17:14 contains the first explicit divine command to 'write this in a book' — the textual founding of Israelite Scripture.
Notable Variants
The 'rock' at 17:6 (petra) that Paul names Christ at 1 Cor 10:4; the Massah/Meribah place-names at 17:7 that Psalm 95 and Hebrews 3:7–11 cite; the 'write this in a book' at 17:14 (grapson touto eis mnēmosynon en bibliō) as the first explicit writing command; the 'hand on the throne of the LORD' at 17:16 — a notoriously obscure phrase that the LXX interprets differently than MT.
Structural Notes
LXX Exodus 17 preserves MT's 16-verse structure.
The whole congregation of the sons of Israel set out from the wilderness of Sin, traveling by stages as the LORD commanded, and they camped at Rephidim. But there was no water for the people to drink.
The journey-by-stages itinerary to Rephidim tracks MT. 'No water for the people to drink' sets up the Meribah confrontation.
The people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?"
The quarrel and the 'why do you test the LORD?' tracks MT. The verb ekpeirazō ('put to the ultimate test') is the same verb Deuteronomy 6:16 uses, which Jesus cites at Matt 4:7 / Luke 4:12 (the second temptation).
But the people thirsted for water there, and they grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt — to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?"
Israel's thirst-grumbling 'why did you bring us up out of Egypt' tracks MT. The wilderness-regret motif continues.
Moses cried out to the LORD, saying, "What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me."
Moses' desperate cry 'they will stone me' tracks MT. The imminent-stoning threat recurs at 1 Sam 30:6 (against David) and Num 14:10 — a leadership-in-crisis motif.
The LORD said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel. Take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.
The divine instruction to go ahead with elders and the staff tracks MT. 'The staff with which you struck the Nile' explicitly links this scene to the opening plague cycle.
I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink." Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
Masoretic (WLC)
הִנְנִי עֹמֵד לְפָנֶיךָ שָּׁם עַל־הַצּוּר בְּחֹרֵב
I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb
Septuagint (LXX)
ὅδε ἐγὼ ἕστηκα πρὸ τοῦ σὲ ἐκεῖ ἐπὶ τῆς πέτρας ἐν Χωρηβ
Behold, I will stand before you there upon the rock at Chōrēb
1 Corinthians 10:4 cites this rock: 'they all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ' (petra de ēn ho Christos). Paul's petra is the LXX-Exodus 17:6 petra.
The 'rock that followed' motif — drawing on the two rock episodes (Exod 17 at Rephidim, Num 20 at Meribah-Kadesh) and their separation in time — was a rabbinic and early Christian tradition of a traveling well. Paul identifies this traveling rock with Christ himself.
The LXX's 'I will stand before you there on the rock' sets God in a formal posture of theophanic availability — a mini-Sinai moment prefiguring the Horeb theophany that will come fully at Exodus 19–20.
He called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the sons of Israel and because they tested the LORD, saying, "Is the LORD among us or not?"
Masoretic (WLC)
מַסָּה וּמְרִיבָה
Massah and Meribah
Septuagint (LXX)
Πειρασμὸς καὶ Λοιδόρησις
Testing and Reviling
The LXX translates the place-names rather than transliterating them: Massah (testing) becomes Peirasmos, and Meribah (quarreling) becomes Loidorēsis. MT readers meet unfamiliar Hebrew names; LXX readers meet the place-names' meanings directly.
Psalm 95 (LXX 94) renames the same place with transliterations — en tō parapikrasmō, en tē hēmera tou peirasmou ('in the embittering, in the day of testing'). Hebrews 3:7–11 quotes LXX Psalm 95 verbatim, using parapikrasmos for the place-name — different LXX translational traditions preserve different meanings.
The wilderness-rebellion paradigm that Hebrews 3–4 develops from Psalm 95 depends on these LXX translations. Hebrews 3:8 ('do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness') works from LXX Exodus 17 via LXX Psalm 95.
Jesus' temptation-narrative (the word peirasmos) is the same root as LXX Massah, connecting the wilderness-testing paradigm directly to the Gospel's baptism-followed-by-wilderness pattern.
Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim.
Amalek's attack tracks MT. The LXX's Amalēk is the Greek form. Amalek becomes in later Jewish tradition the name-embodiment of inveterate enmity against Israel (Haman in Esther is called an Agagite, linking back to King Agag of the Amalekites, 1 Sam 15).
Moses said to Joshua, "Choose men for us and go out to fight Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand."
Moses' command to Joshua tracks MT. The first mention of Joshua (Iēsous in LXX!) in Exodus foreshadows his leadership succession. The LXX's consistent Iēsous for Hebrew Yehoshua is what allows Hebrews 4:8 to punningly connect Joshua and Jesus: 'if Iēsous had given them rest' — the ambiguity is deliberate only in Greek.
So Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
Joshua's battle and Moses' ascent with Aaron and Hur tracks MT.
Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.
The raised-hand / lowered-hand / Israel prevails / Amalek prevails pattern tracks MT. The image became a template for intercessory-prayer theology (Paul's 'lifting holy hands' at 1 Tim 2:8).
But Moses's hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on each side, so that his hands remained steady until the sun went down.
Moses' hands growing heavy, supported by Aaron and Hur, tracks MT. The two-men-supporting image became a patristic icon of the church's communal support of apostolic prayer.
Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
Joshua's victory 'with the edge of the sword' (en phonō machairas) tracks MT.
The LORD said to Moses, "Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua: I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."
Masoretic (WLC)
כְּתֹב זֹאת זִכָּרוֹן בַּסֵּפֶר
Write this as a memorial in a book
Septuagint (LXX)
κατάγραψον τοῦτο εἰς μνημόσυνον ἐν βιβλίῳ
Write this down as a memorial in a book
The first explicit divine command in the Bible to 'write this in a book' (grapson touto … en bibliō). The LXX's biblion becomes the NT's normal word for Scripture-book (John 20:30–31, Gal 3:10, Heb 10:7, Rev 1:11, 22:18–19).
Revelation's biblion references — the scroll with seven seals, the little scroll, the book of life — all trace to the LXX's biblion-vocabulary, of which Exodus 17:14 is the Pentateuchal origin.
The mnēmosynon ('memorial') vocabulary carries the same freight as Ex 12:14 Passover-memorial and foreshadows the written-Torah's role as Israel's corporate memory.
Moses built an altar and called its name "The LORD Is My Banner,"
Moses' altar name 'The LORD is my Banner' (kyrios mou kataphygē) is rendered with kataphygē ('refuge') — a semantic shift from the Hebrew's nissi (standard, banner). The LXX reads Moses' title as a refuge-image rather than a military-standard image.
saying, "A hand is on the throne of the LORD! The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation."
Masoretic (WLC)
כִּי־יָד עַל־כֵּס יָהּ
A hand is on the throne of the LORD!
Septuagint (LXX)
ὅτι ἐν χειρὶ κρυφαίᾳ πολεμεῖ κύριος
For with a hidden hand the Lord makes war
The Hebrew of 17:16 is famously obscure: yad al-kes Yah ('hand on the throne of Yah'). The LXX translates with en cheiri kryphaia ('with a hidden hand'), reading kes as a corruption of kesse ('concealed, hidden').
TCR follows the MT reading 'hand on the throne of the LORD!' but the verse's meaning is genuinely uncertain. Some commentators read 'a hand (raised) to the throne (in oath)' — a divine oath formula.
The LXX's 'hidden hand' reading emphasizes divine covert agency in the Amalek war — the kind of providence-under-apparent-chance that Jewish and Christian wisdom literature develops at length.