And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?- Exo_15:24.
1. Nothing is so hard to bear as disappointed hope. Bitterness in the fountain to which we ran eagerly for relief crushes us more terribly than the absence of any fountain would have done. To find the alluring vision of a gleaming lake to be only a mirage, the reflection of a burning sky upon burning sand, or to find that what is really water is so bitter that it is like poison in the mouth-there is no experience more depressing than that. We can endure almost anything if we have long been looking it steadily in the face; but disappointment! that is a different thing altogether, and crushes the very life out of us the moment it is met. A very suggestive picture of this is given us in the story of Israel's experience at Marah's bitter pool. After the marvellous deliverance, and jubilant songs on the shore of the Red Sea, they had set out on pilgrimage with highest hopes, expecting that every onward step would only bring them into fuller peace. And yet three days had not passed when they found themselves almost dying of thirst in a sun-scorched desert where no smallest brook crossed their path. At last, a long line of distant palms showed that water was near; but what an agony of disappointment to find only a bitter, poisonous pool of which none could drink!
“Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.” Such was their first experience of disappointment after the emancipation from Egypt. And this life of ours, with all its gratifications and fulfilment, yet sometimes yields disappointment in large measure and very grievously. In this matter we begin, like the Hebrews, at the very beginning of our pilgrimage. For our childhood's days are plentifully darkened with the lesser disappointments incident to child-life. We may smile, looking back from the experience of our maturer years, as we remember the trifles that made our hearts heavy. But though trifles to us now, in remembrance, they were not trifles then, in childhood's actual experience. They constituted a very real discipline for our young days. It is as though God were putting us through a rehearsal, so early, of the disappointments that will surely come in later years.
(1) The first thing we notice in this passage is that it is an illustration of the vicissitudes of life. Life has been compared again and again to a journey. It is very much like the journey of these Israelites in that it is full of sudden and startling changes. We triumph one day, and are in despair the next. We bask in the sunshine one day, and are plunged in deep night the next. We sing and dance at the Red Sea one day, and we are ready to die by the bitter waters of Marah the next.
We have our Red Sea days. Oliver Cromwell used to speak of the third of September as the day of his “crowning mercies,” for it was on that day he fought and won the battles of Worcester and Dunbar, and it was on that same day in 1658 that he fought and won his last great fight and passed to his Lord to receive his crown of life. And in much the same way we have our days of crowning mercies, wedding days, birthdays, recovery days, days when some prize for which we had striven fell to our lot, days when the world to us is full of music and of song. But Marah, too-the place of bitter waters-is a station on our journey, and sooner or later we all of us come to it. When sickness comes, when business fails, when husband or wife or child dies-then we are at Marah, and we cannot drink, for the waters of Marah are bitter.
Robert Louis Stevenson says much in his writings about “the duty of being happy.” “A happy man or woman,” he says, “is a better thing to find than a five pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good will.” And the doctrine he preached he bravely tried to carry out. Threatened as he was with consumption, doomed from youth to physical failure, he yet tried to turn to the world a smiling face. But in his Vailima letters to Colvin, in spite of himself, he cannot help now and again a sigh and a groan. When sickness assailed his home, when he felt the shadows of the prison house closing in upon him, even Stevenson found it hard to keep up his smile. I, too, believe in the duty of being happy. We are not to go muling and puling through life. At the same time it is no use to pretend that life is all sunshine and blue sky. And it is an ill business trying to carry to the world a sunny face when we carry in our bosom a broken heart. Moralists may preach as they please about the duty of being happy, but there come days to us in the course of life when we cannot laugh, when we cannot even smile, but when our hearts are filled with desolation and sorrow. “When we come to Marah-we cannot drink-for the waters of Marah are very bitter.”1 [Note: J. D. Jones, The Unfettered Word, 23.]
(2) But when the hour of disappointment comes, then is the very hour for God to sweeten the bitterness by showing us a Tree of Life which takes the poison away, and turns despondency into joy. The tree He showed to Moses was not one created then and there by miracle. It was already growing at the side of the pool; and the Lord does not need to create some new consolations for our suffering hearts, a new Bible, or a new mercy-seat, or a new Christ, or a new atonement, or new promises, or new grace. They are all there, close beside us, waiting for our time of need. He has simply to open our eyes to see them, and give us power to use them, and they will turn any sorrow into thanksgiving and praise. Hagar did not see the well in the desert of Beersheba till “the Lord opened her eyes” that were blinded by tears, but the well had been there, and close beside her all the time. Our help is always far nearer than we think; alas! that we have not always either the opened eye or the trustful, taking hand!
How wisely God has apportioned our cup! He does not give us all sweetness, lest we should rest satisfied with earth; nor all bitterness, lest we grow weary and disgusted with our lot. But He wisely mixes the two, so that if we drink the one, we must also taste the other. And perhaps a time is coming when we shall see that the proportions of this cup of human joy and sorrow are more equally adjusted than we now imagine-that souls capable of enjoyments above the vulgar crowd can also feel sorrow in comparison with which theirs is but like the passing April cloud in contrast with the long Egyptian night. How wise an ordination this is we cannot now discover. It will require the light which streams from the Eternal Throne to reveal to us the blessed effects of having the sentence of death written on all our earthly enjoyments.1 [Note: The Life of Catherine Booth, i. 68.]
“When he had cast a tree into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” It was a strange remedy. One would have thought it was a case for extraction, not addition. The burden of bitterness is a very heavy one. When it comes to us our first cry is, “Empty out the waters!” “No,” says the Divine voice, “instead of emptying them, put something more in them!” And truly the Divine voice is right. What we need for our bitterness is not the removal of things, but the seeing of them in a new relation. The Psalmist speaks of a tree planted by rivers of water. A tree makes a great difference to our view of the water; it may change it from monotony into beauty; it adds a new fact to the old thing. So is it with my calamities; one added point of knowledge will chase them away. When the child is first going to school, it often sheds the waters of Marah. How will you cure these waters? By keeping him from school? God forbid! Show him the developed tree! Show him the fruit of knowledge! Show him that without school he will be a solitary man-mindless in a thinking world! The sight of the tree in the waters will make the waters sweet.2 [Note: G. Matheson, Leaves for Quiet Hours, 108.]
I saw a cup sent down and come to her
Brimful of loathing and of bitterness;
She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir
The depth, not make it less:
But as she drank I spied a Hand distil
New wine and virgin honey; making it
First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until
She tasted only sweet.3 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]
It was when he had become blind to the sights of this world that Milton saw, and sang, the splendours of God's Kingdom. And it was in the gloom of the prison that Bunyan beheld the wondrous meaning of the Christian pilgrimage, and caught glimpses of the Celestial City. One of our most successful medical missionaries in China resorted to the device of affixing texts of Scripture to the walls of the hospital wards, prepared with luminous paint, so that, when the darkness drew on, these sayings of God shone out in view of the wakeful sufferers, making vivid in the night-time what might have been overlooked by day. And so does God still inspire songs in the night season of our grief.1 [Note: T. F. Lockyer, Seeking a Country, 89.]
2. But God does more than merely heal the bitter waters. He leads His pilgrims beyond them to other wells that are always sweet. When Marah is behind us, Elim is in front. The nearness of Elim to Marah is suggestive: only six miles separated the one from the other. Do not the sweetnesses and the bitternesses of life lie very near each other after all? Marahs are not the only experiences of the pilgrimage, though many a weary sufferer would have us believe that they are. Life has many Elims too; and it is often only a short day's journey from the misery to the joy.
Jacob found this true. He was one of the saddest-hearted of men, alone with his fears; but as he “went on his way, the angels of God met him.” David found it true: “O my God, my soul is cast down within me,” “my tears have been my meat day and night”-there he is at Marah, a weary desponding man-but very soon he comes to Elim: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” Hezekiah found it true: “Mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.” Life is all Marah to him there. But as he goes on a little way, he can say, “Behold, for peace I had great bitterness; but thou hast in love to my soul … cast all my sins behind thy back.” “O Lord, by these (sorrowful) things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit.” He has reached Elim now. Paul too had his Marah, when his thrice-repeated prayer for a removal of the “thorn” brought no alleviation of his pain; but he soon came to an Elim where he could say, “Most gladly will I glory in my infirmities; for when I am weak, then am I strong.” And is it not written for all the pilgrims of God, “When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth them for thirst”-sitting at a Marah bitter as death-“I the Lord will open the fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the dry land springs of water”? So they shall have their Elims too.
I wonder if you were ever thirsty? Probably not. I never had been till I came to the Sudan. If you have been really thirsty, and often, you will be able to distinguish many varieties of the phenomenon. The sandstorm thirst I hardly count. It is caused by light soil forming in the gullet: wash the soil away and the thirst goes with it: this can be done with water, which you do not even need to swallow. The desert thirst is more legitimately so called: it arises from the grilling sun on the sand: this is not an unpleasant thirst: the sweat evaporates on your face in the wind of your own galloping, and thereby produces a grateful coolness without, while the throat and gullet are white-hot within. The desert thirst consists in this contrast: it can be satisfied by a gulp or two of really cool water which has also been evaporating through a canvas bottle slung on your saddle. But in so far as it can be satisfied it is no true Sudan thirst. The true Sudan thirst is insatiable. The true Sudan thirst which, to be sure, may be found in combination with either or both of the others, is born of sheer heat and sheer sweat. Till you have felt it, you have not thirsted. Every drop of liquid is wrung out of your body; you could swim in your clothes: but inside, your muscle shrinks to dry sponge, your bones to dry pith. All your strength, your substance, your self is draining out of you: you are conscious of a perpetual liquefaction and evaporation of good solid you. You must be wetted till you soften and swell to life again.1 [Note: G. W. Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum, chap. xxv.]
“And they came to Elim”; and I verily believe if they had not that day come to this pleasant and restful spot, with its twelve springs of water, and threescore and ten palm trees, the Israelites would never have reached Canaan at all, but would have ended their days as slaves in Egypt. If they had not come to Elim that day, there would have been an end to their journeyings; the Book of Exodus would have stopped short just here; there would have been no nation of Israel, and consequently no history of Israel to be written. For another experience like Marah, where they well-nigh died of thirst, another experience of burning sand and bitter water, would have taken the heart out of them-would have broken their spirit within them, and they would have abandoned their dream of Canaan in despair, and returned to the flesh-pots and thraldom of Egypt. Just in the nick of time, shall I say?-just in time to save them from surrender, apostasy, and despair-they came to Elim, where were twelve springs of water, and three score and ten palm trees. And by the springs and palm trees of Elim they not only refreshed their tired bodies, but they revived also their drooping courage and fainting souls.2 [Note: J. D. Jones, Elims of life, 171.]
Elim, Elim! Through the sand and heat
I toil with heart uplifted, I toil with bleeding feet!
For Elim, Elim! at the last, I know
That I shall see the palm-trees, and hear the waters flow.
Elim, Elim! Grows not here a tree,
And all the springs are Marah, and bitter thirst to me;
But Elim, Elim! in thy shady glen
Are twelve sweet wells of water, and palms three-score and ten.
Elim, Elim! Though the way be long
Unmurmuring I shall journey, and lift my heart in song;
And Elim, Elim! all my song shall tell
Of rest beneath the palm-tree, and joy beside the well.1 [Note: William Canton.]
