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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 Corinthians 10:4 - 10:4
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4. πνευματικὸν πόμα. This miraculous supply of water, vouchsafed on two occasions (Exo 17:1-6; Num 20:2-11), belonged, like the manna, not to the natural, but to the spiritual order of God’s Providence, which has its necessary points of contact with the lower and more contracted natural order, and issues in what we call miracles. Hence they were types of still greater miracles, which belong however more exclusively to the spiritual order of things, namely, the nourishing the Christian Church with the ‘spiritual food of the Body and Blood of Christ.’ In this sense, St Augustine (Tract. 26 super Joannem) says well, ‘Sacramenta illa fuerunt, in signis diversa sed in re quae significatur paria,’ because it was Christ who was the miraculous support and preservation of the Israelites in the wilderness, as well as of Christians in their pilgrimage through the world.
ἔπινον. Observe the change of tense. The aorist refers to the whole action as past. The imperfect points out its continuance while it lasted.
ἐκ πνευματικῆς. The A.V. gives a wrong impression here. πνευματικῆς has not the article, and should not, therefore, be translated ‘that spiritual rock.’ The true sense is, ‘for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them as they went.’ St Paul follows no tradition here. He is spiritualising the whole history. ‘I say spiritual food and drink. For during the whole of their wanderings in the wilderness the Israelites were spiritually sustained by a never-failing source of refreshment, a very Rock, indeed, from which waters were ever flowing. And the Rock was Christ.’
ἀκολουθούσης πἐτρας. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan speak of a ‘well’ which followed the Israelites in their wanderings. In the Bemidbar Rabbah (c. i.) it is a Rock, in shape like a bee-hive, which rolled continually forward to accompany the Israelites on their way (for the tradition consult Wetstein, or Schöttgen). Our great Rabbinical scholar Lightfoot rejects this interpretation, and believes that the expression refers, not to the Rock, but the streams which issued from it, and which were gathered into pools wherever they encamped. It was to this, and not to the rock, that the words in Num 21:17 are supposed to be addressed. Estius cites Psa 78:16; Psa 105:41 in support of the same view. See also Deu 9:21, ‘the brook that descended from the mount.’ Meyer thinks that the tradition was a later invention of the Rabbis, since the Targum of Onkelos in its present shape cannot be traced back farther than the third century.
ἡ πέτρα δὲ ἦν ὁ Χριστός. See last note but one. Christ was the true source of all their nourishment, and He went with them whithersoever they went. He, the Angel of the Covenant (Exo 23:20-21; Exo 23:23; Exo 32:34; Jos 5:13), was their guide and their support. Cf. Joh 4:10; Joh 4:14; Joh 7:37-38. For the term Rock, as applied to God, see Deu 32:4; Deu 32:15; Deu 32:18; Deu 32:30-31; Deu 32:37; Psa 18:1, and many other passages in the Psalms too numerous to quote. We can hardly dismiss this passage without quoting Bengel’s remark: ‘Had there been more than two Sacraments, St Paul would have pointed out some spiritual resemblance to them.’