Parshat Beshalach5 min read

At Refidim Their Hands Went Slack and Amalek Came

There was no water at Refidim, and the people quarreled until Moses told God they were close to stoning him. Then Amalek came at them out of the hills.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. No Water at Refidim
  2. Ready to Stone Him
  3. Amalek Came
  4. The Hands on the Hill
  5. Until the Sun Went Down
At Refidim Their Hands Went Slack and Amalek Came Click for full size

No Water at Refidim

They came up out of the wilderness of Sin by stages and pitched camp at Refidim, and there was nothing to drink.

Not a spring, not a cistern, not a wet patch under a rock. Livestock first, then children. The camp turned on Moses in a body.

"Give us water to drink."

"Why are you quarreling with me?" he said. "Why are you testing the Lord?"

That answer bought nothing. The thirst got worse through the day and the grumbling got harder and by evening they were saying it out loud in front of him. "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt? To kill us and our children and our animals with thirst?"

Ready to Stone Him

Moses got away from them and cried out.

"What am I supposed to do with this people? A little more and they will stone me."

"Go on ahead of them," God told him. "Take some of the elders with you. Take the staff you struck the Nile with and carry it in your hand. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out and the people will drink."

He did it where the elders could see him do it. The staff came down on stone, and water ran out of it, and a camp that had been ready to kill him drank.

He named the place twice over, for the testing and for the quarrel, because they had argued with him and tested God by asking a question out loud that nobody in that generation should have had to ask. Is the Lord here with us or not?

Amalek Came

Then Amalek came and fought Israel at Refidim.

No warning, no herald, no dispute over wells or pasture. Raiders out of the hill country onto a column of people who had been in the desert six weeks and had spent the last day of it fighting over water.

They came at the tail of the column first, where the tired ones walked. The women carrying children, the old men, the ones whose feet had gone bad in the sand and who could not hold the pace. Amalek cut those down and was back in the rocks before the fighting men at the front had turned around.

Moses sent for Joshua. "Pick us out some men and go out and fight Amalek tomorrow. I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand."

Joshua picked his men that night by lamplight and nobody in the camp slept much.

The Hands on the Hill

In the morning Joshua went down into the valley with the men he had chosen, and Moses climbed the hill with Aaron and Hur.

When Moses held his hand up, Israel got the better of it. When he let his hand come down, Amalek got the better of it. The line of the fighting below moved with an old man's arm.

So he held it up. And the arm got heavy, the way an arm does, and then both arms went slack from the shoulder and started to sink no matter what he wanted.

Aaron and Hur put a stone under him and sat him down on it. Then one of them took his right hand and the other took his left and they held his arms up for him, one on each side.

Until the Sun Went Down

His hands stayed steady until the sun went down.

Down in the valley Joshua worked through the day with the edge of the sword and broke Amalek and his people, and the raiding stopped, and the column had its road back. The men who came off that field had been fighting since the light came up, and none of them had known that the whole thing was hanging on two other men holding an old man steady on a rock above their heads.

"Write this in a book so it is kept," God told Moses, "and say it in Joshua's hearing. I will wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."

Moses stacked an altar on the hill and named it for a banner, because a hand had been lifted against the throne, and there would be war with that house from generation to generation.

Three men came down off the hill in the dark. Two of them were still working the ache out of their own arms.

AmalekRefidimMosesTorah
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Mekhilta Tractate Vayassa 7:1Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

When the Torah says that Israel "encamped in Refidim" (Exodus 17:1), the Mekhilta hears more than a place name. The rabbis break the word apart: "rafu yadam", "their hands weakened." Weakened in what? In words of Torah.

Israel had grown lax. They stopped studying, stopped engaging with the divine teachings that had sustained them since Sinai was promised. And the moment they let go of Torah, disaster struck. Amalek attacked (Exodus 17:8).

The Mekhilta draws a direct causal line between the two events. The enemy does not come because of bad luck or military miscalculation. "The foe comes only as the result of sin and transgression." Amalek was not a random threat appearing on the horizon. He was a consequence, the inevitable result of a spiritual vacuum.

This reading transforms Refidim from a geographic footnote into a moral warning. The name of the place itself encodes the reason for the catastrophe that happened there. Whenever Israel's grip on Torah loosens, enemies sense the weakness and attack. The Mekhilta treats the entire episode as a paradigm for Jewish history: physical danger follows spiritual neglect. The best defense against external threats is not stronger walls or sharper swords, but stronger commitment to study and practice. When the hands are firm on the Torah scroll, Amalek cannot prevail.

Full source
Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 17:1Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai

Translation of the source text.Mechilta de-Rabbi Simon b. Jochai, ed. D. Hoffmann, Frankfurt 1905 · Public Domain

"And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin" (Exodus 17:1). According to the order of our exposition we have learned that the enemy comes only on account of sin and on account of transgression.

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Mekhilta Tractate Shirah 1:22Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Mechilta, translated by Rabbi Shraga Silverstein · CC-BY

"I shall sing to the L–rd," who is comely, who is glorious, who is exalted, whose like does not exist, (Psalms 89:7) "For who in the heavens can be compared to the L–rd, can be likened to the L–rd among the sons of the mighty"? (Ibid. 8) "G–d greatly dreaded in the great council of the holy, (held in awe by all around Him?") And it is written (Ibid. 9), "O L–rd, the G–d of hosts ("tzeva'oth"), who, as You, is mighty, O L–rd?: What is "tzeva'oth" (acronymically)? He is an "oth" (i.e. unique) in the midst of His retinue ("tzava"). And thus is it written (Devarim 33:2) "Ve'atha" ('and He shall come') from Rivevoth Kodesh" (figuratively: "the ten thousands of His holy ones.") And thus did David say (Psalms 86:8) "There is none like You among the great ones, O L–rd, and there are none like Your works." And (Song of Songs 5:19-15) "My Beloved is clear and red," "His head is finest gold," "His eyes are like doves by water-courses," "His cheeks are like beds of spice," His hands are rods of gold," "His legs are pillars of marble". His are comeliness, greatness, strength, and glory!

Full source