Moving Rock in the Wilderness

The midrash of the moving rock arises from attempts to reconcile and find additional meaning in the two water-from-the-rock episodes in Exodus and Numbers. Rather than two separate miracles, later traditions imagined a single rock that followed the Israelites through the wilderness. This idea appears in diverse forms across early Jewish and Christian texts—including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Pseudo-Philo, Paul, and rabbinic literature—each adapting the motif to their own theological literary frameworks.