Marah (Bible)

Marah (Bible)

Marah (Hebrew: מָרָה meaning 'bitter') is one of the locations which the Torah identifies as having been travelled through by the Israelites, during the Exodus .

The liberated Israelites set out on their journey in the desert, somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula. And it becomes clear that they are not spiritually free. Reaching Marah, the place of a well of bitter water, bitterness and murmuring, Israel receives a first set of divine ordinances and the foundation of the Shabbat. The shortage of water there is followed by a shortness of food. Moses throws a log into the bitter water, making it sweet. Later God sends manna and quail. The desert is the ground where God acquires his people. The 'murmuring motif' will - from here on - be a recurring perspective of the wandering Jewish people.

Marah - bitterness - a fountain at the sixth station of the Israelites (Ex. 15:23, 24; Num. 33:8) whose waters were so bitter that they could not drink them. On this account they murmured against Moses, who, under divine direction, cast into the fountain "a certain tree" which took away its bitterness, so that the people drank of it. This was probably the 'Ain Hawarah, where there are still several springs of water that are very "bitter," distant some 47 miles from 'Ayun Mousa. —Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary