The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,

Only in the land of Goshen, where the Israelites lived, was there no hail.

After they journeyed from Rephidim, they came to the Desert of Sinai, and they camped in the desert; Israel camped there in front of the mountain.

The people kept their distance, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.

The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the Lord by name.

You are to place the ark of the testimony in it and shield the ark with the special curtain.

You are to put the large basin between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it.

He cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When Moses threw it into the water, the water became safe to drink. There the Lord made for them a binding ordinance, and there he tested them.

Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the water.

and her two sons, one of whom was named Gershom (for Moses had said, “I have been a foreigner in a foreign land”),

Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, together with Moses’ sons and his wife, came to Moses in the desert where he was camping by the mountain of God.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain.

“This will be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will meet with you to speak to you there.

Be prepared in the morning, and go up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and station yourself for me there on the top of the mountain.

But on that day I will mark off the land of Goshen, where my people are staying, so that no swarms of flies will be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of this land.

The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, so that when I see the blood I will pass over you, and this plague will not fall on you to destroy you when I attack the land of Egypt.

Pharaoh got up in the night, along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house in which there was not someone dead.

But the people were very thirsty there for water, and they murmured against Moses and said, “Why in the world did you bring us up out of Egypt – to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?”

I will be standing before you there on the rock in Horeb, and you will strike the rock, and water will come out of it so that the people may drink.” And Moses did so in plain view of the elders of Israel.

He called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the contending of the Israelites and because of their testing the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”