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The Myth: And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. (Num. 20:12)

During Israel’s wanderings it arrived in the Wilderness of Zin, where the Israelites found themselves without water. This led to angry complaints against Moses and Aaron. “And why have ye brought up the congregation of the LORD into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there?” (Num. 20:4).

Distressed, Moses and Aaron went into the Tabernacle and fell on their faces before the LORD, awaiting divine guidance. When God appeared, he gave Moses some instructions.

Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. (Num. 20:8)

The key instruction in God’s message was that Moses should just speak to the rock and his words would produce water. Instead, when Moses appeared before the Israelites, he declared,

Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. (Num. 20:10–11 )

Moses failed to follow God’s word. He didn’t speak to the rock. Instead, to call forth the water he used his staff to strike the rock twice. God was angry at Moses’s disregard of his instructions and punished both him and Aaron, declaring, “Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them” (Num. 20:12). As punishment for their sin, both Moses and Aaron were denied entry into the Promised Land.

There are several things wrong with this story. First, if God was displeased with their actions, why did the water come out of the rock? Only God could make that happen. Moses could bang his rod all over the desert and not find a drop unless God brought it forth. If the deity wanted to show his displeasure, the rock would have remained dry until Moses did what he was told.

Third, and most important, Moses already had been denied entry on an earlier occasion and not because of his sin but because of Israel’s sin. Moses had sent some scouts out for military intelligence. They reported that the enemy was too powerful and couldn’t be defeated. The Hebrews didn’t want to fight. But God had told the people that they would conquer the land, and when they questioned their ability to defeat this powerful enemy they were questioning the word of the LORD. God, therefore, regretted bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and he wanted to destroy them.

And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. (Num. 14:11-12)

Noble Moses, however, would have none of this and he beseeched God to forgive the people. He reminded the LORD that other nations would see that God failed to deliver his people as he promised and they would take it as a sign of his weakness. Vanity won out and God relented .

God’s forgiveness, however, had a price. He denied all the current generation except Joshua and Caleb entry into the Promised Land. Not even Moses would be allowed to cross over. As he told the congregation, “Also the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither” (Deut. 1:37).

And I besought the LORD at that time, saying, O LORD GOD, thou hast begun to shew thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth, that can do according to thy works, and according to thy might? I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon. But the LORD was wroth with me for your sakes, and would not hear me: and the LORD said unto me, Let it suffice thee; speak no more unto me of this matter. (Deut. 3:23–26)

Furthermore the LORD was angry with me for your sakes, and sware that I should not go over Jordan, and that I should not go in unto that good land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance: But I must die in this land, I must not go over Jordan: but ye shall go over, and possess that good land. (Deut. 4:21–22)

So, Moses’s fate already had been determined before the incident at the rock. He had been denied entry into Canaan and his action in striking the rock had nothing to do with it. In fact, the entire story is a deliberately misleading account of a different incident in which Moses acted blamelessly.

It seems that long before this incident in the Wilderness of Zin, there was another water shortage in the Wilderness of Sin. Again the people complained, using some of the very same words as they did in Zin.

And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink. Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD? And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst? (Exod. 17:1–3)

In this version, Moses alone went to speak with God. And what was God’s solution? That “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” (Exod. 17:6).

It is curious that one story takes place in the Wilderness of Zin and the other in the Wilderness of Sin. Despite the slight variation in spelling, both words would be pronounced in a similar manner. And if that weren’t coincidence enough, after the first incident in Sin, God called the place Meribah; and after the second incident in Zin, God called that place Meribah, too.

What has happened here is that someone took an innocent story about Moses, changed some facts, and applied them to a story in which both Moses and Aaron were punished. Which brings us back to the question of why was Aaron also punished?

Originally, there must have been a story about Aaron in which he sinned against God’s command and was denied access to the Promised Land. The story about Moses wrongfully tapping the rock belongs to the P source, which was pro-Aaron and negative towards Moses.

The priestly author combined the fact that both Moses and Aaron had been denied the right to enter into Canaan but transformed the noble act of Moses into a base act, thus diminishing the sin of Aaron by contrast. One reason for the conflict between the Moses and Aaron factions had to do with the role of the Levites in the priesthood. The Moses source favored all branches of the Levites as co-equal in the priesthood; the Aaronite source believed that only Aaron’s branch should serve the main priestly functions and that other Levites should only perform lesser roles.