Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

The Rock that followed
1 Corinthians 10:4; Exodus 17:1-7; Numbers 20:2-13

"...all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." (1 Corinthians 10:4 Paul tells the Corinthians not to think of themselves as more blessed than Israel and thus unlikely to fall or fail but rather to take heed. In all this he sneaks in a strange reference to πνευματικης͂ακολουθουσης͂πετρας "that spiritual rock that followed them". Most readers do not notice the apparent absurdity of this rolling rock and just move on to the next verse.

We could just argue that this is a metaphor; after all it is a "spiritual rock", rather than a real rock rolling after them. In the preceding verse we have spiritual food and drink, but these are not referring to spiritual nourishment through meditation on God's word but to actual food and drink, since spiritual refers to their origin, God himself, not their substance. Jewish writers called the Manna received in the wilderness מעכלרוחני, "spiritual food", yet it was real enough to need physical collecting and staved off genuine hunger.^F1

The "spiritual drink" is presumably figurative of the blood of Christ, indeed Jewish tradition^F2 records that the struck rock seeped blood first before the second blow when it released water. Although the meaning is different it is interesting that there is a variation on the old proverb^F3 "you can't get blood out of a stone" as "you can't get water out of a stone".

There also appears to be a Jewish tradition behind the "rock that followed". The symbolism of the rock as Christ is not problematic, although in so doing Paul is virtually ascribing deity to Jesus as "Rock" was a term for God. The phrase that causes us to turn to Jewish legend is "followed" as this seems to imply a rolling stone following them during the wilderness wanderings.

Understandably, some have a problem with references to Jewish legend given that Paul elsewhere speaks of "not giving heed to Jewish fables" (Titus 1:14, cf. 1 Timothy 1:4; 2 Timothy 4:4).

For example, the Assembly of True Israel web site,^F4 who describe themselves as differing "from modern corrupt Christianity in several major ways, and categorize [them]selves as "True Believers" of Scriptural Truth", regard the translation, "the rock that followed", as "taking great license with God's Word":

As you can see, verse four is the critical one. The KJV arbitrarily capitalizes the word "Rock," indicating that it is a name or title for Jesus. However, the Greek makes no such distinction. The translators took it upon themselves to capitalize it. It is the Greek word "petra," which just happens to be in the feminine case and means a rock mass, or a cliff, or monolithic mountain of some sort, and refers to the stone monolith at Meribah - not to anyone in particular.

Secondly, in the KJV, the phrase, "...that followed them:" comes from the Greek word, "akoluthuo," which means "to conform," "imitate" or "to pattern after," and is usually translated "follow" or "following," and turning it into the phrase, "that followed them," is taking great license with God's Word. But that is what the translators did. They took "...that spiritually following rock," and turned it into, "...that spiritual Rock that followed them." This turn of the phrase made it very hard to understand the meaning of this scripture.

The word "following" is the same word that Jesus used when He said to "take up your cross and follow him." Now, He did not mean to follow around after him through all the villages dragging a literal cross behind you. He obviously meant to pattern your life after his, and imitate his ways.

Thus, we see that Jesus was not "following" (imitating) Israel, for how could anyone suggest that Jesus would have wanted to pattern his life after Israel's example? Jesus didn't emulate Israel. Rather, Israel was supposed to emulate Christ. Israelites became disciples of Jesus - not the other way around.

Now, if you prefer to ignore the correct definition of the word, and insist that it only means to "walk behind," then please explain who was leading whom in the wilderness. Did Israel lead, or was she being led? Anyway, use your own lexicon or Greek dictionary and you can define this word correctly for yourself.

The "stone monolith" at Meribah was not literally following around after Israel, as if it were something alive. This was not a walking mountain, nor was it a "pre-existent" Jesus, as the fundamentalists have asserted. Rather, Paul is referring to the "cliff," or "rock" at Meribah which Moses struck with a rod causing fresh water to gush out of the "rock mass" for the thirsty Israelites to drink (Exodus 17:1-7).

Paul is explaining to the Corinthians that the "rock mass" at Meribah was spiritually patterned after Christ (i.e. it prefigured him). It was a figure, or a shadow, of the Savior in the same way that the Passover lamb also prefigured him.

The "rock mass" was a spiritual pre-pattern of Jesus. The "rock mass" was struck with a rod for the sake of Israel, so also did Jesus suffer "stripes" for our sakes (1 Peter 2:24). Life-giving waters flowed from out of the "rock mass" at Meribah, so also did Jesus give us the "waters of life," (John 4:10; 7:37-39; Revelation 22:17).

Thus, I Corinthians 10:1-12 carries a completely different message than what the deceived, and deceiving, churches are teaching.

Although the writer above makes some reasonable points we should not rule out a Jewish midrashic tradition dating from at least the time of the Aramaic targums.

The Targum Jonathan^F5 on Numbers 21:19 describes the well that "followed" them:

"From the time that the well in Mattanah was given them, it was made again to them brooks that were overflowing and violent; and again it went up unto the tops of the mountains, and went down with them into the valleys...".

In the Tosephta,^F6 the tradition is related as follows:

"It was likewise with the well that was with the children of Israel in the wilderness, it [the well] was like a rock that was full of holes like a sieve from which water trickled and arose as from the opening of a flask. It [the rock-well] ascended with them to the top of the hills and descended with them into the valleys; wherever Israel tarried there it tarried over against the entrance to the tabernacle"

The Midrash on Numbers^F7 records:

"How was the well constructed? It was rock-shaped like a kind of bee-hive, and wherever they journeyed it rolled along and came with them. When the standards [under which the tribes journeyed] halted and the tabernacle was set up, that same rock would come and settle down in the court of the Tent of Meeting and the princes would come and stand upon it and say, Rise up, O well, and it would rise."

Other variants of this legend describe a fragment of rock fifteen feet high that followed the people and gushed out water. The Jewish legend developed because of Numbers 21:17 which tells us that when Israel came to Beer ("well"), there Moses gathered the people to receive the water, "Then Israel sang this song, 'Spring up, O well! Sing to it!'". Tradition has it that the water came from the same rock that Moses had struck in Exodus 17, and which had, therefore, followed the people to Beer. The Talmud^F8 cites rabbis from the 2nd century as knowing the moving well legend.

Indeed the second Greek usage of "drank" in 1 Corinthians 10:4 επινον is actually the imperfect "they used to drink" implying regular or repeated action, not a single event - possibly endorsing a continually available rock-well. These legends may vary in date but "there can be little question that in its basic form it goes back at least to the time of Paul".^F9 Most of the references place the emphasis on a moveable well; Paul chooses the more christological emphasis on "rock". For Moses, "the Rock" was a title of God (Deuteronomy 32:4,15,18,30,31,37).

For Paul, the issue of the truth of the Jewish legend is not paramount but in the type he sees Israel as having had access to baptism, communion and indeed Christ himself. Yet they still fell away. So his point is beware lest you fall (1 Corinthians 10:12).

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FOOTNOTES:
F1: See Gill on 1 Corinthians 10:3 quoting Yade Mose in Shemot Rabba, 109.3
F2: Midrash Rabbah Exodus 3.14: "He smote the rock and brought forth blood, as it is said: Behold, He smote the rock, that waters gushed out - wayazubu (Psalm 78:20), and the word wa-yazubu is an expression used of blood, as it is said: And if a woman have an issue (yazub) of her blood (Leviticus 15:25). For this reason did he smite the rock twice, because at first he brought forth blood and finally water."
F3: Also given as the Latin ab asino lanam, a futile attempt to get "wool from an ass".
F4: http://assemblyoftrueisrael.com/IsJesusGod/Spiritualrock.htm
F5: The targums were early Aramaic paraphrases of the Bible; Etheridge, The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel On the Pentateuch With The Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum From the Chaldee, (London: 1865), p.300
F6: The Tosephta or "additions" to the Mishnah were compiled perhaps in the 5th century A.D. Sukkah 3.11 ff., cited in Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, vol. 3, p. 406; cf. Neusner, p.220
F7: Midrash Numbers Bemidbar Rabbah 1.2
F8: Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anith 9a; Shabbath 35a. Cf. Mishnah, Aboth, 5.6; Midrash Numbers, 19.26
F9: Fee, NICNT 1 Corinthians, (Eerdmans, 1987), p.448

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KJ Went has taught biblical Hebrew, hermeneutics and Jewish background to early Christianity. The "Biblical Hebrew made easy" course can be found at www.biblicalhebrew.com.

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