Moses Stood on the Hill and Merit Fought Amalek

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The Night After the Water

Refidim had no water in it, so the camp had turned on Moses over the shortage and asked the question out loud: is the LORD among us, or not. He struck a rock in front of the elders and the water came, but the question stayed in the air where everyone could hear it. Then Amalek came up on the tail of the column and cut down the ones walking slowest, the tired and the sick and the children who could not keep the pace, and did it without any fear of God at all.

That evening Moses told Joshua to pick out men and go fight in the morning. Then he added the sentence the whole day would turn on. "Tomorrow I shall stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand" (Exodus 17:9).

What Joshua Heard

Joshua heard a commander making him a promise. Tomorrow we will be with you, up on the height where the line can see us, the staff held where a man swinging a blade can glance up and find it. An army that can see its leader keeps its shape; an army that cannot see him comes apart from the middle. He went to choose his men with a picture in his head of a silhouette on the ridge and a rod against the sky, and he slept the way a general sleeps when he knows where his rallying point will be.

What Moses Meant

Moses meant something else by tomorrow. He meant they would proclaim a fast.

By standing on the hill he did not mean being visible. He meant putting their weight on the deeds of the fathers, so the staff in his hand was not a banner, and the wood was not the point; what he was carrying up that slope was the merit of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, three men who could no longer be summoned to say anything on Israel's behalf. Joshua had asked for a signal and was being handed three dead men and an empty stomach. Amalek did not fear God, though he had every reason to, and a people who had just asked out loud whether God was with them were going to answer that question with their own arms in the morning.

Arms Until Sunset

The fighting started early and settled into an ugly arithmetic. While the hand was up, Israel pushed forward; when the hand came down, Amalek came back over the same ground. Nobody in the valley could see the fathers in the wood. They could see a man on a ridge whose arms were failing.

Moses' hands got heavy. That is all the record says about the worst part of it, that they got heavy, and it does not take long standing with both arms over your head before the shoulders start to burn and the elbows drift and the whole thing becomes a matter of will and then stops being a matter of will at all. Aaron and Hur put a stone under him and sat him on it. Then one of them took the right arm and the other took the left, and they held him up like that, one on each side, and his hands stayed steady until the sun went down.

Who Wrote the Name Into the Ground

The place already had two names from the quarrel over the water. Massah, testing. Merivah, strife. Moses could have hung those on the spot himself, branding a campsite with what his own people had done there, and one reading of the verse says he did exactly that.

Read it the other way and it was not Moses who named it. It was the Makom, the Place, which is one of the names of God, because the world does not hold Him, He holds the world. On that reading the shame in the map was not carved by the man who was embarrassed by it. It was carved by the one who contains the ground it was carved into, which means no later generation gets to scrub it out, and it also means the title stands: the Holy One is called Makom.

The Empty Table

Remember is the word for the Sabbath and remember is the word for Amalek, which looks at first like the two of them being weighed the same. A king made a banquet and called his guests in. While the tray came through the door loaded with everything good he said, "I call to mind my friend so-and-so." When the tray had been cleared and was going back out empty he said, "I call to mind my enemy so-and-so." His friends asked him how he could name the two of them in one evening. He said the first was named over a full tray and the second over an empty one.

The Sabbath gets remembered over food and drink and clean clothes. Amalek gets remembered over a cleared table, and the remembering runs until the memory is blotted out from under heaven, which has not happened yet.

They broke camp at Refidim in the state a beating leaves a people in, and the record says they came into the desert of Sinai the same way they left, penitent both times. So they carried a place-name meaning quarrel with them to the foot of the mountain and set it down there, and stood in front of it, and waited.