Exodus 17:6

Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb,.... Or "upon that rock" (k), a particular rock which was pointed unto, where the Lord in the pillar of cloud would stand; not as a mere

And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me. Moses cried unto the Lord.

I will stand before thee there, in my cloudy pillar, which shall stand over that place. Horeb and Sinai are sometimes spoken of as the same place, and sometimes as two differing places, as here, compared with . The learned write, that this was one long mountain, whereof there were two eminent parts or tops, the one at a considerable distance from the other, and Horeb was the first part of it, and near Rephidim; and Sinai the more remote, to which they came afterwards. Moses did so, i.e. smote the rock, and the waters flowed out plentifully and continually, making a river, which God caused to follow them to their several stations. See .

Exodus 17:6 Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.Ver. 6. Upon the rock.] If God had not stood upon the rock, in vain had Moses struck it. Means must be used, but God only depended upon for success. It is he alone that sets the rock abroaeh. Thou shalt smite the rock.] Herein a type of Christ "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." And there shall come water out of it.] Not fire - that had not been so miraculous - but water. This "cleaving the" hard "rock," this "turning of the flint into a fountain," was a work of Onmipoteney, and is therefore much celebrated. Dioseorides tells us of the stone Galactites, quod succum emittat lacteum, that it yields a kind of moisture like milk: which, if it "be true, is very strange. That the people may drink.] And so be cooled and comforted in their weariness and wanderings. "Ho, every one that thirsteth," &c.

Verse 6. I will stand before thee there, upon the rock in Horeb] THE rock, הצור hatstsur. It seems as if God had directed the attention of Moses to a particular rock, with which he was well acquainted; for every part of the mount and its vicinity must have been well known to Moses during the time he kept Jethro's flocks in those quarters. Dr. Priestley has left the following sensible observations upon this miracle: - "The luminous cloud, the symbol of the Divine presence, would appear on the rock, and Horeb was probably a part of the same mountain with Sinai. This supply of water, on Moses only striking the rock, where no water had been before nor has been since, was a most wonderful display of the Divine power. The water must have been in great abundance to supply two millions of persons, which excluded all possibility of artifice or imposture in the case. The miracle must also have been of some continuance, no doubt so long as they continued in that neighbourhood, which was more than a year. There are sufficient traces of this extraordinary miracle remaining at this day. This rock has been visited, drawn, and described by Dr. Shaw, Dr. Pocock, and others; and holes and channels appear in the stone, which could only have been formed by the bursting out and running of the water. No art of man could have done it, if any motive could be supposed for the undertaking in such a place as this." This miracle has not escaped the notice of the ancient Greek poets. Callimachus represents Rhea bringing forth water from a rock in the same way, after the birth of Jupiter. Πληξενοροςσκηπτρῳ, τοδεοἱδεχαπουλυδιεστη. Εκδ' εχεενμεγαχευμα. Hymn ad Jov., ver. 31. _____________ With her sceptre struck The yawning cliff; from its disparted height Adown the mount the gushing torrent ran. PRIOR. The rock mentioned above has been seen and described by Norden, p. 144, 8vo.; Dr. Shaw, p. 314, 4to., where there is an accurate drawing of it; Dr. Pocock, vol. i., p. 143, &c., where the reader may find some fine plates of Mount Horeb and Sinai, and four different views of the wonderful rock of Meribah. It is a vast block of red granite, fifteen feet long, ten broad, and twelve high. See Dr. Shaw's account at the end of Exodus. My nephew, who visited this rock in 1823, confirms the account of the preceding travellers, and has brought a piece of this wonderful stone. The granite is fine, and the quartz mica, and feldspar equally mixed in it. This rock or block of granite is the only type of Christ now existing.

6. stand before thee] be present with My omnipotence (Di.): a fine and striking anthropomorphism. the rock] Not a particular rock, but the rocky mass in general (cf. Exodus 33:21-22). in Horeb] The statement occasions great difficulty,—at least for those who place Rephidim in W. Feiran, and identify Sinai (substantially = Horeb) with J. Mϋsβ, by the shortest route 24 miles (see above) beyond W. Feiran. If Sinai were J. Serbβl, the mountain above W. Feiran, on the S., there would be no difficulty; nor would there be any, if Sinai were J. Mϋsβ, and Rephidim were where Keil places it, at the SE. entrance to the plain er-Rβḥ ?ah, just N. of J. Mϋsβ. ‘Horeb,’ however, is equally with ‘Sinai’ the scene of the lawgiving (see Deuteronomy 4:15); so, even though (see on Exodus 3:1) it may have been a somewhat wider term than ‘Sinai,’ it is scarcely likely that it will have included territory separated from it by a rough mountainous country, and only to be reached by a mountain valley at least 24 miles long. If, therefore, Rephidim is rightly placed in W. Feiran, and J. Mϋsβ is rightly identified with Sinai, the most natural supposition is that the author wrote without an accurate knowledge of the topography, and did not realize how far ‘Horeb’ was from ‘Rephidim.’ It is, however, a question whether ch. 17–18 did not originally stand at a later point of the narrative, after ch. 34 (cf. p. 162), in which case Rephidim might be near ‘Horeb.’

The rock in Horeb - (a rock situated, according to Arab tradition, in Wady Feiran. Horeb was a name given to the whole desert of Sinai and subsequently attached to the mountain. Palmer).

6. I will stand before thee — In the pillar of cloud. In Horeb — The name of the mountain cluster, or district, towards which Israel was now advancing.