He had been told to speak to it. He struck it twice.
📖Based on Numbers 20:11
The people had no water.
They gathered against Moses and Aaron.
They said it would have been better to die when the others died.
Why have you brought us into this wilderness to die?
There is no grain here. No figs. No vines. No pomegranates.
And there is no water to drink.
Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the tent of meeting.
The glory of the LORD appeared.
God told Moses: Take the staff.
Assemble the congregation.
Tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water.
Speak to the rock.
Moses took the staff from before the LORD.
He and Aaron assembled the congregation before the rock.
He said: Hear now, you rebels.
Shall we bring water for you out of this rock?
And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice.
Water came out abundantly.
The congregation drank.
The livestock drank.
Then God said to Moses and Aaron: Because you did not believe in me.
To uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel.
Therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land I have given them.
God had said speak to it.
Moses struck it.
The water came anyway.
The people drank.
From the outside it looked identical to every other miracle.
But the instruction had been different this time.
Moses had called them rebels.
He had said shall we bring water.
Taking credit alongside God.
The anger. The two strikes. The word we.
Forty years of wilderness.
The whole journey to the edge of the promised land.
And he would see it from a mountain.
But not enter.
Because of two strikes on a rock.
When he had been told to speak.
Scripture — Numbers 20:11
"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."
Reflection
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God said speak. Moses struck. The water came regardless. Success in outcome is not always obedience in method.
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He called them rebels in his anger. At that moment, the anger speaking for him was the problem.