What Does Exodus 17:3 Mean?

But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?" The Rephidim complaint escalates the Egypt-was-better formula to its maximum: this time the death-wish includes "our children and our livestock": the most vulnerable members of the community are invoked to intensify the accusation.

Not just adult Israelites dying of thirst but children and animals dying. The rhetorical escalation is the thirst-desperation's expression: when the children are suffering, the emotional intensity of the complaint rises to its highest pitch.

"Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us?" repeats the Sin-wilderness charge (Exodus 16:3) with the added "and our children and our livestock." Each repetition of the Egypt-versus-wilderness comparison intensifies: the meat-pots complaint (chapter 16) becomes the child-and-livestock-dying complaint (chapter 17). The wilderness tests are cumulative in the community's complaint vocabulary: each new crisis borrows the previous crisis's complaint and amplifies it. Israel's complaint rhetoric escalates as the tests do.

The livestock mention ("our children and our livestock") is practically significant: the Exodus community included large herds (Exodus 10:26, "not a hoof shall be left behind"; Exodus 12:38, "very many livestock"). The water need for livestock in the desert is enormous: a single cow needs many liters of water per day; the community's animals would require massive water provision to survive. The livestock-inclusion in the thirst complaint is not rhetorical hyperbole but practical desperation: the animals the community depends on for future food, work, and sacrifice are also dying of thirst.