Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water that we may drink." And Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?"This is obviously the Divine Abridged Version of the story.
Just looking at this briefly, I don't really see a problem. You have a huge number of people, literally in the middle of nowhere, with no water source. These people need water (naturally), they don't have water, which means that unless something amazing happens, they're dead. So they go the person who's been providing miracles, a guy by the name of Moses, and present their need. He gets a bit cranky about their request, though.
That's where you have to look again. Then, you realize that the Israelites are going about this all wrong. They do need water, of course, but they go looking for it in all the wrong places. They go to Moses, which I can understand; he has been their conduit to God recently. However, they don't ask God for water, or go requesting for Moses to intervene with God. They go and issue a demand of Moses, as if he's the one who can quirk an eyebrow and an aquifer appear. If they had instead gone to Moses and said, "please ask of God to give us water that we may drink," the place would have had a very different name.
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