Massah

Massah . According to Dt. 6:16 and 9:22, a place in the wilderness where Israel put God to the test: Massah (from nissa®, ‘to test’) means ‘testing’. In Ex. 17:7 the name is coupled with Meribah (= ‘quarrel, complaint’, from rˆîb≈ = ‘strive, complain’) in a story from the older Pentateuchal sources which shows the Israelites protesting because of lack of water at *Rephidim, close to Mt Horeb (v. 6). The two names again appear together in Ps. 95:8, a warning to later generations which could refer to this episode.
The name Meribah also occurs (without Massah) in conjunction with *Kadesh, both in a boundary-list (Ezk. 47:19) and as the location of a similar episode (mainly drawn from P), which results in both Moses and Aaron being denied the privilege of entering the promised land (Nu. 20:1–13 [cf. v. 24]; 27:14; Dt. 32:51; Ps. 106:32).
Both narratives are aetiological, i.e. imply that the names were given as a result of these events of the Mosaic period. But because of the legal connotations of the verb rˆîb≈ it has often been suggested that Meribah was first of all a place where legal disputes were settled (cf. En-mishpat, ‘well of judgment’, another name for Kadesh [Gn. 14:7]). This can only be a hypothesis, but there are other reasons for wondering whether the straightforward explanation of the names is historically correct.
The attempt has frequently been made to separate out a Massah-story and a Meribah-story in Ex. 17:1–7, but, although there is a little unexpected repetition (vv. 2–3), it is not sufficient to justify analysis into two separate stories, deriving from different sources. The same must be said for Nu. 20:1–13. What is more likely is that, in both cases, there has been some amplification of the original account by a later author. In Ex. 17:1–7 this amplification may be responsible for the introduction of the allusion to Meribah (and perhaps Massah also) in vv. 2 and 7.
Dt. 33:8 and Ps. 81:7, where these names also occur, can scarcely refer to the same episodes, since here there is no hint of criticism and it is God, not the people of Israel, who is doing the ‘testing’. The theme of God testing Israel is one that is encountered several times in Exodus (15:25; 16:4; 20:20). It seems likely that other events, perhaps mentioned elsewhere in the Bible (Ex. 32?), perhaps not, were at one time connected with these places. To date, no fully satisfactory correlation of [739] the various passages has been made, and it may be that the literary and historical problems are insoluble. For some ingenious, if speculative, suggestions see H. Seebass, Mose und Aaron, 1962, pp. 61ff.