פירוש על שמות 17:3

TO PUT US AND OUR CHILDREN AND OUR CATTLE TO DEATH WITH THIRST. In their complaint, they mentioned the cattle too, thus telling Moses that they need a lot of water and it is therefore necessary to take counsel on the whole matter. This is why it says at the second time [when the incident at the waters of Meribah is recorded], and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their cattle.⁴¹⁴Ibid., 20:11. Now here it is not mentioned but it is self-understood that when the rock was turned into a pool of water, they drank and they watered their flocks (Ramban in Verse 5 further). In the instance of the waters of Meribah at Kadesh, it is mentioned on account of the mishap that resulted from the entire affair, as explained there; see also Ramban here in Verse 5 for another interpretation. And our Rabbis have said:⁴¹⁵Mechilta on the verse here. “They made their cattle equal in importance to themselves. They said: ‘A man’s beast is as his life. If a man travels on the road and his beast is not with him, he suffers.’”
Now the reason they mentioned us and our children and did not say generally: “to put us to death with thirst” or “to put to death this whole assembly,” [an expression] which would have included men, women and the little ones, as they said in other places,⁴¹⁶Such as above, 16:3, to put to death this whole assembly by famine. is that by mentioning the children to him, they emphasized their murmuring against him so that he should make haste in the matter, since the young ones could not suffer thirst at all and they would thus die before the eyes of their parents. This is something like the expression, The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst.⁴¹⁷Lamentations 4:4.

ויצמא שם העם למים, The people thirsted there for water, etc. One cannot help wondering why G'd subjected the people to such a trial that they came close to dying of thirst. Most ordinary people would turn heretics if subjected to this kind of trial. Besides, it is even harder to understand Moses who did not take the initiative and offer prayers on behalf of the people and their suffering instead of crying out to G'd that the people were about to stone him in their frustration? Moses' prayer sounds as if he was insensitive to the people's thirst, concerned only with his own death by stoning!

ויצמא שם העם למים, “The people thirsted for water there.” When their thirst became intolerable, the people ganged up on Moses, wanting to know why, seeing that things were worse for them than in Egypt, he had bothered to take them out of there? Nachmanides describes what happened somewhat differently. As soon as the people arrived at Refidim and found that there were no wells of drinking water there, they immediately started a quarrel with Moses, and this is the reason why the Torah reports that the people quarreled with Moses without giving any specific reason. Their demand for water is self-explanatory. This time, as opposed to previous occasions, they demanded water from him, claiming that it was his responsibility to provide this for them. Moses answered them that they had addressed their complaint to the wrong party, seeing that it had not been he who had led them out of Egypt, but that they were in fact putting G’d to the test, seeing that it was He Who had taken them out of Egypt. He suggested that if they would stop pestering him and instead would pray to the Lord, their needs would soon be taken care of. We know that Moses was correct in accusing them of putting G’d’s ability to provide water for them to the test, as it is written in verse 7 ועל נסותם את ה' לאמור היש ה' בקרבנו אם אין, “because of the people putting G’d to the test, wanting to know if the Lord is among us or not.” When Moses realized how thirsty the people were, he himself brought their prayer to G’d, and he told G’d how the people had quarreled with him and had accused him of being responsible for their sorry condition.