Exodus 15:23: “And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter, therefore the name of it was Marah.”

There is the story of a woman who did everything to try and please her husband, but he managed to find fault with everything she did.  One morning he demanded she make two eggs for him, one scrambled and one fried.  She took her time and scrambled the one egg to perfection and fried the other just as she knew her husband liked it.  When he looked at it, he scolds her and said: “You fried the wrong egg.”

That sounds extreme, but sometimes we can treat God the same way.  The word in the Hebrew used for bitter is marim.  There are three possible roots. One is found in both Hebrew and Aramaic, rum and means to be high, exalted, and prideful.  Another possible root word is marah” which means to be bitter in the sense of being rebellious, contentious, or fault finding.  The third root is marar which means to be bitter in tasting.

Jewish literature teaches that this word marim was intended to express all three roots.  When you look at the syntax of this verse you find it is not clear if the bitterness is in the people or the water.  This ambiguity in the syntax is most likely intended.  Jewish tradition teaches that the people did not drink the water because it was both bitter tasting and it tasted bitter because they were bitter and too proud to stoop to drinking water that was distasteful.

Marar merely means distasteful, not poisonous.  The water most likely had a brackish taste to it as water in this area is known to have.  You can drink it but it is not exactly your dream date.  However, in time of thirst, it will serve your purpose.  But, the people themselves were bitter, making them contentious.  A contentious person is one who is always looking to find fault, always looking for an argument.

I was listening to a radio talk show during the 2008 Presidential election where a man from a large city called in to complain about the Republicans.  He said he was a Republican and would have voted for the Republican candidate but decided to vote Democratic  because the Republican declared as his slogan: Country first.  Since he was from the city, he felt it was totally unfair to put country people first and city people second.  This was a contentious person who was just looking for a reason to argue and I guess to vote against the Republicans.

The children of Israel could have drunk the water God provided for them, but it did not taste well enough for them, they tasted better water in Egypt.  There is an old Jewish saying: “The children of Israel did not drink the water because it was bitter, they did not drink the water because they were bitter.”

We, as Christians, can be pretty smug when we look at the children of Israel. Here God provided everything for them, food, clothes that would not wear out, protection, deliverance but when they did not get good tasting water, they turned their noses up at it and walked away. A good modern
English equivalent for marim is – spoiled brats.

We as American Christians can be pretty much the same.  Here we live in a country with freedom of religion.  No one will arrest us for worshipping God, no one will chop our heads off if don’t follow another religion.  We have an overabundance of the Word of God, a church on every corner where we can find a worship service where we feel comfortable.  We can listen to whatever Christian music we want.  Not only that but we have full stomachs, a closet full of clothes, we live in one of the richest countries in the world, yet when I go to church I find people fighting over whether to have green olives or black olives at a church social (as a pastor I once sat through a business meeting where they argued for one half hour whether to have black or green olives – I timed it).   So before we pick up rocks to stone the children of Israel for belly aching over foul tasting water, maybe we should pause and see if there is any marah in us.  I mean we are told by some preachers we have a rich God and we should have the best.  So while we have Christian brothers and sisters in other countries losing their jobs, homes and even their lives for taking a stand as a believer in Jesus,  we look at our broken down Ford Focus and say, “Well, God surely would not want one of his own driving in that thing, I am going to believe Him for a brand new BMW and when we don’t get it we think there is something wrong with our faith. There is nothing wrong with our faith, it is our attitude, we have become marim – spoil brats.

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