By Clement Harrold

July 3, 2025

Since ancient times, Jewish and Christian interpreters alike have puzzled over God’s decision to prevent Moses from entering the Promised Land. The immediate context for the decision is found in Numbers 20. It’s the fortieth and final year of the Exodus, and the Israelites have once again run out of water in the wilderness.

Faced with this calamity, the people begin complaining against Moses and Aaron, saying they wish they had stayed in Egypt. (It’s because of this complaining that the place receives the name Meribah, or “contention.”) Moses then goes to the tent of meeting, where God delivers him an instruction:

Take the staff and assemble the community, you and Aaron your brother, and in their presence command the rock to yield its waters. Thereby you will bring forth water from the rock for them, and supply the community and their livestock with water. (Num 20:8 NABRE)

After assembling the congregation, Moses prepares to draw water from the rock. But rather than commanding the rock to yield its water—which is what God had told him to do—instead Moses “struck the rock twice with his staff, and water came out in abundance, and the community and their livestock drank” (Num 20:11 NABRE). It’s at this point that God issues a solemn warning to Moses and Aaron:

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: Because you did not have confidence in me, to acknowledge my holiness before the Israelites, therefore you shall not lead this assembly into the land I have given them. (Num 20:12 NABRE)

On its face, this feels like a major overreaction. Moses and Aaron are guilty of a seemingly trivial departure from God’s instructions, and in return they’re given a devastating penalty. The punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime. So what are we to make of this confusing episode?

A Lack of Faith?

Since antiquity, commentators have disagreed over the best way to interpret the Numbers 20 passage. The first puzzle is why Moses acts in the way that he does. Why does he strike the rock, rather than commanding it in the way God told him to? In His rebuke of Moses and Aaron, God implies that their disobedience stemmed from some kind of lack of faith: “Because you did not have confidence in me, to acknowledge my holiness before the Israelites . . .” (cf. Num 20:24; 27:14).

One possibility is that Moses regarded the details of God’s command as unimportant, especially since he had already had success with hitting a rock to draw water some thirty-nine years earlier at the beginning of the Exodus (see Ex 17:1-7). (We might add that there’s also something mysterious about God still instructing Moses to bring his staff to the rock in Numbers 20, even though God didn’t want him to use it.)

Another possibility is that Moses hit the rock in a fit of impatience and anger directed not at God but at the Israelites—the “rebels” (Num 20:10) who have been causing him and Aaron so much grief. This interpretation arguably finds support in Psalm 106:

They [the Israelites] angered him [God] at the waters of Mer′ibah,

    and it went ill with Moses on their account;

for they made his spirit bitter,

    and he spoke words that were rash. (Ps 106:32-33)

Perhaps there was a sense in which Moses momentarily gave up on his people. He no longer cared about helping them to see God’s holiness and power; instead he just wanted to get the job done as soon as possible.

Yet another possibility is that it was Moses’s pride which got the better of him. His words to the Israelites could be interpreted as saying that it is he and Aaron, not God, who will work the miracle for them: “Hear now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?” (Num 20:10). Perhaps the rock-striking episode illustrates Moses giving in to the temptation to rely on his own power, rather than making the act of faith which God asks of him.

Ultimately we don’t know why Moses did what he did. Nor do we know the answer to our second puzzle, namely, why the punishment God laid on Moses was so severe. The picture is complicated further when we consider that there are a number of other times in the Pentateuch when Moses shows himself to be less-than-perfect (see, e.g., Ex 4:24-26). And yet, for some reason, the punishment Moses received on those occasions was much more short-lived.

It seems, then, that the sacred author has intentionally left the events of Numbers 20 quite ambiguous. On one level, this ambiguity is frustrating. But on another level, the mysterious nature of the text invites us to reflect more deeply on everything which Moses is forced to undergo.

The Sins of the People

One aspect of the Biblical narrative which might shed light on Moses’s punishment is his role as a priestly figure who intercedes to God on behalf of the people. We find a dramatic illustration of this in Deuteronomy 9, which recalls Israel’s apostasy with the golden calf back in Exodus 32. Moses reminds the Israelites how on no less than three occasions he offered prayer and penance on their behalf:

Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. When I went up the mountain to receive the tables of stone, the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water. (Deut 9:8-9)

 

Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin which you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. (Deut 9:18)

 

So I lay prostrate before the Lord for these forty days and forty nights, because the Lord had said he would destroy you. (Deut 9:25)

In these texts, Moses shines forth as a prototype of Christ: one who intercedes on behalf of the nation, and offers satisfaction to God on account of their sins. When we juxtapose this with the punishment Moses receives in Numbers 20, it opens the door to the possibility that Moses has in some sense been asked to share in the punishment of the sinful generation of Israelites who were barred from entering the Promised Land (see Deut 2:14).

This line of thinking seems to be supported elsewhere in the book of Deuteronomy. Consider the following passages, which suggest that sins of the people were responsible, at least in part, for the anger which God directed at Moses:

And the Lord heard your words, and was angered, and he swore, “Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land which I swore to give to your fathers, except Caleb the son of Jephun′neh; he shall see it, and to him and to his children I will give the land upon which he has trodden, because he has wholly followed the Lord!” The Lord was angry with me also on your account, and said, “You also shall not go in there.” (Deut 1:34-37)

 

And I besought the Lord at that time, saying, “O Lord God, thou hast only begun to show thy servant thy greatness and thy mighty hand; for what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as thine. Let me go over, I pray, and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that goodly hill country, and Lebanon.” But the Lord was angry with me on your account, and would not hearken to me; and the Lord said to me, “Let it suffice you; speak no more to me of this matter.” (Deut 3:23-26)

 

Furthermore the Lord was angry with me on your account, and he swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance. (Deut 4:21)

These moving verses underscore the profound lengths which Moses was called to go to in identifying with, and suffering for, sinful Israel. It is this priestly role of Moses, moreover, which leads the people to contend with him at Meribah, just as they contend with God:

And the people contended with Moses (Num 20:3)

These are the waters of Mer′ibah, where the people of Israel contended with the Lord (Num 20:13)

To Moses, then, belongs the privilege and burden of mediating Israel to God, and God to Israel. And yet, we can only make sense of the first few books of the Bible if we remember that Moses only ever does this imperfectly: he is merely a type or symbol of Christ, not Christ Himself. These imperfections are highlighted at Meribah where, for reasons not entirely clear to us, Moses falters in his relationship with God.

And yet, the interpretation we have been entertaining here would suggest there may be more going on at Meribah than meets the eye. Undoubtedly God is punishing Moses in one respect. But might it also be the case that, in a deeper sense, God is inviting Moses to offer reparation on behalf of His people? Perhaps Moses who had long ago agreed to be God’s chosen instrument was now being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice of love and obedience for the sake of sinful Israel.

If this is true, then it suggests that it was precisely by looking at the sufferings of Moses that Israel caught a glimpse of God’s absolute holiness as expressed in His total incompatibility with sin: “These are the waters of Mer′ibah, where the people of Israel contended with the Lord, and he showed himself holy among them” (Num 20:13; cf. Ezek 28:22).

By sharing in the penalty for their disobedience, Moses revealed to the Israelites both the true cost of their own sin and the true radicality of redemptive love. And in his sacrifice, God’s people saw an image of the One who was to come: the new and greater Moses, the eternal Son of God, who would suffer and die for the sake not only of Israel, but of the whole world.

Further Reading

John Bergsma and Brant Pitre, A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament (Ignatius Press, 2018)

About Clement Harrold

Clement Harrold earned his master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2024, and his bachelor’s from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2021. His writings have appeared in First Things, Church Life Journal, Crisis Magazine, and the Washington Examiner.