Three days into the desert, with no water, Israel finally reached a spring and could not drink it. The water was bitter, so the place was named Marah, which means bitterness. The people grumbled at Moses; Moses cried out to the LORD, who showed him a tree, and when it was thrown in the water, the water turned sweet. The next stop was Elim, with twelve springs and seventy palm trees. It is a short scene about thirst, complaint and provision, found in Exodus 15:22-27 and recalled in the camp list in Numbers 33.
6 verses
So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water.
And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah.
And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,
And they departed from before Pihahiroth, and passed through the midst of the sea into the wilderness, and went three days' journey in the wilderness of Etham, and pitched in Marah.
And they removed from Marah, and came unto Elim: and in Elim were twelve fountains of water, and threescore and ten palm trees; and they pitched there.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
Bitterness, a fountain at the sixth station of the Israelites (Ex. 15:23, 24; Num. 33:8) whose waters were so bitter that they could not drink them. On this account they murmured against Moses, who, under divine direction, cast into the fountain “a certain tree” which took away its bitterness, so that the people drank of it. This was probably the ‘Ain Hawarah, where there are still several springs of water that are very “bitter,” distant some 47 miles from ‘Ayun Mousa.
William Smith, 1884
(bitterness), a place which lay in the wilderness of Shur or Etham, three days journey distant, (Exodus 15:23; Numbers 33:8) from the place at which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, and where was a spring of bitter water, sweetened subsequently by the casting in of a tree which "the Lord showed" to Moses. Howarah , distant 16 1/2 hours (47 miles) from Ayoun Mousa , the Israelites’ first encampment, has been by many identified with it, apparently because it is the bitterest water in the neighborhood.