After the crisis at the rock, the place received two names: Massah, meaning "testing," and Merivah, meaning "quarreling" (Exodus 17:7). But who gave it those names? The Mekhilta records a debate between two sages that reveals a deeper theological question.
Rabbi Yehoshua says Moses named the place. The verse reads, "And he called the name of the place Massah and Merivah." The "he" is Moses, who memorialized the people's failure by branding the location with the evidence of their sin. A human leader named a place after human weakness.
Rabbi Elazar Hamodai disagrees entirely. He reads the verse differently: "And He, the Makom, called it Massah and Merivah." The word "Makom" literally means "the Place," but it is also one of the names of God in rabbinic tradition. God Himself is called "the Place" because He is the place of the world — the world does not contain Him; He contains the world.
On this reading, it was God who named the location, not Moses. And the Mekhilta draws a remarkable conclusion from the wordplay: "Whence it is seen that the Holy One Blessed be He is called Makom." A dispute about who named a desert campsite becomes proof of one of God's most profound titles — the One who is the Place of all existence.