What is written (Exodus 15:27), ‘and they came to Elim, and there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they camped there by the waters’? And what praise was there in seventy palm trees? In one of the smallest of places there are a thousand! Rather, they merited [something] corresponding to them, and there is a parable for them in the palms. As it is written, ‘and they came to Marah, and they could not drink water from Marah, for it was bitter’ — this teaches that the north wind was mixed in, as it is said (ibid. 25), ‘and he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree, and he cast it into the water, and the water became sweet.’ Immediately the Holy One put His hand upon the Adversary and diminished him; and had it not been so, Israel could not have stood before him, as it is written (ibid.), ‘there He made for him a statute and an ordinance, and there He tested him.’ This teaches that at that hour the Adversary clung to them, in order to destroy them from the world, as it is written (ibid. 24), ‘and the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink?’ And moreover he accused Moses, until he cried to the LORD and was answered. And what is ‘and the LORD showed him a tree’? This teaches that the tree of life was around the waters, and the Adversary came and took it from there, in order to accuse Israel and cause them to sin against their Father in heaven; and he would say to them: now you will enter the wilderness, and even these waters, which are bitter, are good, for you will supply yourselves from them; but in the wilderness you will not find even [enough] to wash your hands and your face, and you will die of hunger and of thirst, naked and lacking everything. They came to Moses and said to him thus and thus; he pushed them away. He saw that he could not prevail against them, [and] strengthened himself against Israel and against Moses; and the people came and murmured against Moses: here we lack water, and what shall we drink in the wilderness? The Adversary came and falsified their words to Moses, in order to make them sin. And immediately, when Moses saw the Adversary, ‘and he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a tree’ — it was that tree of life that the Adversary had removed — ‘and he cast it into the water, and the water became sweet.’ ‘There He made for him’ — the Holy One [set] for the Adversary ‘a statute and an ordinance,’ ‘and there He tested’ Israel; and the Holy One came to warn Israel, and said, ‘if you will diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD your God,’ and so on.