As we noted in December, occasionally the New Testament authors interpret the Old Testament in ways that may leave us scratching our heads. Some may assume that the New Testament authors were playing by a set of rules perfectly valid for them since they wrote as inspired interpreters, but that we could never interpret the Old Testament the way that they did. However, the New Testament authors interpret the Old Testament in such as way as to teach us how to do the same. Not only can we interpret the way they do, we should. Admittedly, it seems intimidating when we just can’t figure out what they are doing! It can be helpful to work through such "head-scratchers" together until we get the hang of it.
Another New Testament head-scratcher may be found in 1 Corinthians 10:1-4:
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
There may be several puzzling items here, but one would stand out even if this article didn’t have a title giving it away…
The Rock was Christ? Seriously?
Most of us are familiar with Paul’s allusions here. He mentions the people eating “spiritual food”, referring to their eating the manna from heaven (Exo 16). He mentions their drinking “spiritual drink,” referring to the couple of occasions when God commanded Moses to give them water from a rock (Exo 17, Num 20). That he refers to these sources of sustenance as “spiritual” is a tip-off that Paul sees these events as types. A type is a person, event, or institution that corresponds to and escalates toward a greater person, event, or institution in salvation history. The greater person, event, or institution is called the anti-type.
We could also think of a type as something like a pattern of how God has worked in the past indicating how he is expected to work in the future. The Old Testament authors, chiefly Moses, recognized patterns in God’s work and wrote in such a way as to draw out these patterns for the reader so that we would anticipate further such works, culminating in the ultimate work of Christ. These original Old Testament authors, while intending to forecast typological patterns, may not have fully understood exactly how those patterns would culminate in Christ.
All this is to say that Paul understands the manna and the water from the rock to picture something greater later on. Similarly, he notes that the rock was “spiritual.” That is, the rock pictures something else. He even identifies what that something else is…Christ. The rock out of which God sustained the people with water pictured Christ.
Many of us may rightly say, “I would never make that kind of connection…”
…And if someone told us we should, we would feel like we were heading into the Wild West of biblical interpretation…anything goes…as if we could just find anything in the Old Testament that might look similar to Jesus and say, “that’s a type of Christ!”
Certainly, it is an admirable thing to be careful with the Word of God. We should only identify as types what the original Old Testament author intended as a pattern of God’s coming works.
A question I would like to explore here is: Did Paul engage in a "Wild West kind of biblical interpretation"? That is, did Paul just find something in the Old Testament that seemed similar to Jesus and slap a type label on it? Or…did Paul recognize that Moses intended the rock to be understood as a pattern of things to come? I will argue the latter.
Paul read Moses carefully. Moses intended the rock to be understood as a pattern of things to come. In the fullness of time, that pattern culminated in Christ.
For the sake of space, we will not look at the two texts where God instructed Moses to give the people water from a rock (Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20:2-13). I encourage you to take a look if you are not already familiar with them. Notice that one comes at the beginning of the sojourn toward the land of promise and one toward the end.
Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 are not the only places where Moses addresses the rock. This is a crucial point. In fact, if these were the only two passages mentioning the rock, there would be little warrant to view the rock as a type. Significantly, Moses makes comments about the rock in Deuteronomy which signal the rock as a typological pattern.
In Deuteronomy 31, God tells Moses to teach the Israelites a song:
19 “Now therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel. 20 For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant. 21 And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.” 22 So Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the people of Israel.
(Deut 31:19–22)
As the people prepare to enter the land, God knows that in the future they are going to abandon Him. God wants to teach them a song before they even enter, a song which will act as something like a prosecuting attorney in their own mouths as the years pass by. In a nutshell, the theme of the song is, “God saved Israel, but Israel was unfaithful and served other gods, and so all this well-deserved troubled has come upon Israel” (Deut 32:1-43). Again, they learn this song of self-condemnation before they ever enter the land and commit the crime.
The lyrics of this song include signs that the sustenance from the rock in the past is part of a pattern that will continue in the future. These signs include:
1. The lyrics refer to Yahweh as “the Rock.” Deuteronomy 32:4 reads, “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.” This is the first time in the Old Testament that God is called “the Rock.” The only time this word for rock is used previously in Deuteronomy is to remind the people of God’s providing water for them from the rock in the wilderness (8:15)!
One might assume that a simple analogy is being made between the character of Yahweh and the attributes of a rock. However, the following signs make it far more likely that Moses intends us to see a parallel between the wilderness waterings and God Himself as He sustains His people. The rock represents something other than itself—a person—God Himself.
2. The lyrics use language from the wilderness waterings of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20. Interestingly, Moses uses two different words for rock in the wilderness waterings, one in Exodus 17 and one in Numbers 20. He uses both of them in the lyrics of Deuteronomy 32:13b: …and he suckled him with honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. Moreover, the last phrase “flinty rock” is a phrase found only one other place in the entire Old Testament…Deuteronomy 8:15, which recalls Yahweh as the one who “brought you water out of the flinty rock.”
By using these words, the lyrics borrow the language of past salvation to talk about the people’s future in the land.
3. The lyrics mix the language of past provision with language of future provision. Some of you noticed it wasn’t water from a rock depicted in Deuteronomy 32:13, but honey and oil. Why would that be?
When God intially tells Moses to teach the song to the people, he indicates that the content will pertain to the future, “when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut 31:20). Earlier in Deuteronomy, when Moses envisions the same future, he notes its bounty using vivid language, “a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees [oil] and honey” (Deut 8:8). Most of these commodities are depicted in the very near context of the lyrics pertaining to the rock in Deuteronomy 32:13.
Essentially, the lyrics take language of past sustenance—the wilderness waterings of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20—and combine them with language of future sustenance in the land—honey, oil, milk, vines, etc.
The implication? God’s provision in the past is a pattern that will continue in the future. Just as He provided water from the rock in the wilderness, so also He will provide a land flowing with milk and honey in the future. So faithful is God to His people that the rock is a picture of God Himself providing for and saving His people (see also Isa 48:21; Psa 78:15, 35; Psa 81:16).
It is no stretch to hold that Moses intended the rock as a pattern of things to come. Further, he viewed the rock as representing God Himself.
At the very least, Paul has simply done what New Testament authors do all the time—ascribe to Christ what the Bible elsewhere ascribes to God. That is, God is the rock, so Christ is the rock. However, the context of 1 Corinthians 8-10 shows that Paul’s theological reasoning is more sophisticated than that. A full treatment of 1 Corinthians 8-10 is more than can be provided in this article. Suffice to say that in calling manna “spiritual food” and the water from the rock “spiritual drink,” Paul has simply recognized Christ as our true and ultimate sustenance, now memorialized in the Lord’s Supper (discussed in 1 Corinthians 10:15ff).
Certainly, we may find things in the New Testament use of the Old Testament that puzzle us. However, if we read both carefully, we will inevitably find the New Testament authors not only to be reasonable in their approach, but to be excellent teachers about how to read the Bible. If we carefully follow their lead, we’ll have a greater appreciation for the richness of the Word and a deeper affection for the Person to whom it leads.
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