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1 CORINTHIANS 10

EXPOSITION

Vers. 1-14. - Warnings against over confidence in relation to idolatry and other temptations.

Ver. 1. - Moreover; rather, for. He has just shown them, by his own example, the necessity for strenuous watchfulness and effort. In continuance of the same lesson, he teaches them historically that the possession of great privileges is no safeguard, and that the seductions, even of idolatry, must not be carelessly despised. Although the connection of the various paragraphs is not stated with logical precision, we see that they all bear on the one truth which he wants to inculcate, namely, that it is both wise and kind to limit our personal freedom out of sympathy with others. The reading "but" (morever) is probably a correction of the true reading (for), due to the failure to understand the whole train of thought. I would not that ye should be ignorant. This is a favourite phrase of St. Paul’s (1 Corinthians 12:1; 2 Corinthians 1:8; Romans 1:13; 11:25; 1 Thessalonians 4:13). The ignorance to which he refers is not ignorance of the facts, but of the meaning of the facts. All our fathers. He repeats the "all" five times, because he wishes to show that, though "all" partook of spiritual blessings, most (ver. 5) fell in spite of them. He says, "our fathers," not only because he was himself a Jew, but also because the patriarchs and the Israelites were spiritually the fathers of the Christian Church. Were under the cloud. The compressed Greek phrase implies that they went under it, and remained under its shadow. The "cloud" is the "pillar of cloud" (Exodus 13:21), of which David says, "He spread a cloud for a covering" (Psalm 105:39). The Book of Wisdom (10:17) calls it "a cover unto them by day," and (19:7) "a cloud shadowing the camp." All passed through the sea (Exodus 14:22).

Ver. 2. - Were all baptized. This reading, though well supported, may, perhaps, be a correction for the middle, "they baptized themselves," i.e. accepted baptism. The passing under the cloud (Exodus 14:19) and through the sea, constituting as it did their deliverance from bondage into freedom, their death to Egypt, and their birth to a new covenant, was a general type or dim shadow of Christian baptism (compare our collect, "figuring thereby thy holy baptism’’). But the typology is quite incidental; it is the moral lesson which is paramount. Unto Moses; rather, into. By this "baptism" they accepted Moses as their Heaven-seat guide and teacher.

Ver. 3. - And did all eat the same spiritual meat. As the cloud and the Red Sea symbolized the waters of baptism, so the manna and the water of the rock symbolized the elements of the other Christian sacrament, the Lord’s Supper. The manna might be called "a spiritual food," both because it was "angels’ food" (Psalm 78:25; Wisd. 16:20) and "bread from heaven" (Psalm 78:24; John 6:31), and also because it was a type of "God’s good Spirit," which he "gave to instruct them" (Nehemiah 9:20). St. Paul only knows of two sacraments.

Ver. 4. - The same spiritual drink. The water from the smitten rock might (Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:11) be called a "spiritual" drink, both as being a miraculous gift (comp. Galatians 4:29, where Isaac is said to be "born after the spirit"), and as being a type of that "living water" which "springs up into everlasting life" (John 4:14; 7:37), and of the blood of Christ in the Eucharist (John 6:55). These "waters in the wilderness’’ and "rivers in the desert" were a natural symbol of the grace of God (Isaiah 43:23; 55:1), especially as bestowed in the sacrament through material signs. They drank; literally, they were drinking, implying a continuous gift. Of that spiritual Rock that followed them; rather, literally, of a spiritual following Rock. This is explained

(1) as a mere figure of speech, in which the natural rock which Moses smote is left out of sight altogether; and

(2) as meaning that not the rock, but the water from the rock, followed after them in their wanderings (Deuteronomy 9:21). There can, however, be little or no doubt that St. Paul refers to the common Jewish Hagadah, that the actual material rock did follow the Israelites in their wanderings. The rabbis said that it was round, and rolled itself up like a swarm of bees, and that, when the tabernacle was pitched, this rock came and settled in its vestibule, and began to flow when the princes came to it and sang, "Spring up, O well; sing ye unto it" (Numbers 21:17). It does not, of course, follow from this allusion that St. Paul, or even the rabbis, believed their Hagadah in other than a metaphorical sense. The Jewish Hagadoth - legends and illustrations and inferences of an imaginative Oriental people - are not to be taken au pied de la lettre. St. Paul obviates the laying of any stress on the mere legend by the qualifying word, "a spiritual Rock." And that Rock was Christ. The writings of Philo, and the Alexandrian school of thought in general, had familiarized all Jewish readers with language of this kind. They were accustomed to see types of God, or of the Word (Logos), in almost every incident of the deliverance from Egypt and the wanderings in the wilderness. Thus in Wisd. 10:15 and 11:4 it is Wisdom - another form of the Loges - who leads and supports the Israelites. The frequent comparison, of God to a Rock in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 32., passim; 1 Samuel 2:2; Psalm 91:12, etc.) would render the symbolism more easy, especially as in Exodus 17:6 we find, "Behold, I [Jehovah] will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb."