Water from the rock EXO 17:6

The Israelites arrived at Rephidim and found no water at all, and their complaint against Moses grew so fierce that he feared they were about to stone him. God told Moses to go on ahead with the elders, carry the staff he had used on the Nile, and strike a rock at Horeb. When he did, water came out and the people were able to drink.

The text sets the rock at Horeb while the camp itself is at Rephidim, so Horeb seems to be a nearby site within that mountain region rather than a separate stop in the journey. Horeb is also the name used elsewhere for Sinai, which is why many readers see this as the first approach to that mountain. The passage does not spell out the geography further, so the exact relationship stays an inference rather than a stated fact.

Moses named the place for what the people had actually done there, so it would mark both their quarreling with him and their testing of the Lord by asking whether he was really among them. One name recalls the testing, the other the quarrel, and together they turn a simple location into a lasting comment on Israel's doubt at that moment. The naming is the narrator's way of making sure the reader does not miss the point of the episode.

These are two separate incidents in the biblical narrative, even though both involve Moses, a rock, and a shortage of water. This one happens early, at Rephidim before the people reach Sinai, while the Numbers account comes near the end of the wilderness years at a different location that also ends up called Meribah. Readers sometimes blend the two because of the shared name and theme, but the texts present them as distinct events at different times.