The Rock That Followed Them For 40 Years??

In this post I’m raising one of those “weird” issues in the Bible. What do we do with this?

In Exodus 17:6, the people of Israel were at Rephidim and needed water, Moses struck the rock at Horeb and water came out for the people:

All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the LORD, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the LORD, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” And the LORD said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the place Massaha and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the LORD by saying, “Is the LORD among us or not?”

In Numbers 20:11 - apparently many years later - the people of Israel were at Kadesh - a completely different place - and needed water, Moses struck the rock and water came out for the people.

Now there was no water for the congregation. And they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Would that we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD! Why have you brought the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we should die here, both we and our cattle? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It is no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there is no water to drink.” Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces. And the glory of the LORD appeared to them, and the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.” And Moses took the staff from before the LORD, as he commanded him.

Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock. And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarreled with the LORD, and through them he showed himself holy.

But the passages refer to both places as "Meribah". Hmm...

Are those different rocks? I would have thought so. But scholars long ago believed it was the same rock that traveled with the people of Israel.

"This rock came to be known as “Miriam’s Well,” for, as mentioned, the miracle was done in her merit. For 40 years, this rock traveled with the people and served them faithfully, providing water for them and their animals, its tributaries serving as borders between the tribes when they camped."

Moses Strikes the Rock: The Full Story

Dr. Brian Collins notes:

Modern interpreters who think Paul is drawing on Jewish interpretive traditions connect Paul’s statement, “For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them” (10:4), with Jewish traditions of a moving well. Earle Ellis provides a synthesis of the rabbinic traditions that these interpreters appeal to:

A movable well, rock shaped and resembling a sieve, was given to the Israelites in the desert. As to origin, it was one of the things created on the evening of the Sixth Day. About the size of an oven or beehive, it rolled along after the wanderers through hills and valleys, and when they camped it settled at the tent of meeting. When the princes called, ‘Rise up, O well’ (Num. 21.17), water flowed from its many openings as from a flask. . . At the death of Miriam the well dried up and disappeared, for it was given for her merit. But for the sake of the Patriarchs it was restored, and continued with the Israelites until they reached the Sea of Tiberias. . . .

E. Earle Ellis, “Note on 1 Corinthians 10:4Open in Logos Bible Software (if available),” Journal of Biblical Literature 76.1 (March 1957): 53-54

Exegesis of 1 Corinthians 10:4: Does Paul Interpret the Old Testament Allegorically

So... did the rock travel with them or is it describing two different rocks? Neither Biblical passage implies in any way that the literal rock traveled with them. So that makes the idea a bit strange (but then the story has the Israelites regularly and miraculously receiving manna from heaven, being led by a pillar of cloud/fire, and the parting of the Red Sea are also part of the story). And they were in a desert area, so where were they getting water if not from the rock?

Paul mentions the story in I Corinthians 10:

"... our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ."

The Greek for “followed” can also be translated “accompanied”.

https://biblehub.com/greek/190.htm

Obviously we have a literal/figurative issue here.

Do we work from the position that the rock itself was literal and the concept of Christ being the rock is figurative (seems to sort of be implied by referring to it as a "spiritual rock")? If so, what is it figurative for? Just provision? More?

I don’t know any Christian who considers the rocks which were struck to be figurative, so even if we read Paul’s statement of the “spiritual rock” of Christ as purely figurative, that hasn't resolved the issue of whether or not the literal rock literally moved with them and provided them with water for 40 years... or if it was two different rocks?

And if the literal rock literally moved with them, was it just rolling along/being rolled along with them? Floating in the air? Why couldn't God have just caused any rock at each location to have provided water for them instead of using the same rock?

Biblical interpretation and understanding is work. And context from ancient sources can shed great light on what's going on. Yet we may still never be able to say with certainty exactly what happened. Dr. Peter Enns discusses the issue in some detail:

... here is the issue that made it impossible for me to shake the feeling that something was wrong with how I was taught to think about the Bible. The Bible just wasn’t behaving as I had always been told it most certainly does—needs to—behave.

This happened while in graduate school and centered on just one verse:

“for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:4)

... Paul is referring to the incident in the Pentateuch where the Israelites got water from a rock while wandering in the desert for 40 years. To equate Christ with the rock is a typical example of Paul’s Christ-centered reading of his scripture (our Old Testament): the savior was present with God’s people then as he is now.

All fine and good, but what threw me was that word “accompanied.”

One day in class, my professor James Kugel was lecturing on the creative ways that Second Temple Jewish interpreters handled episodes like “water from a rock.” The curious detail in the Old Testament is that the incident happened twice: once at the beginning of the wilderness period (Exodus 17) and again toward the end of the 40-year period (Numbers 20).

This curious fact led some Jewish interpreters to conclude that the “two” rocks were actually one and the same, hence, one rock accompanied the Israelites on their 40-year journey. We see this idea quite clearly in a Jewish text from the late 2nd century CE called the Tosefta.

And so the well which was with the Israelites in the wilderness was a rock, the size of a large round vessel, surging and gurgling upward, as from the mouth of its little flask, rising with them up onto the mountains, and going down with them into the valleys. Wherever the Israelites would encamp, it made camp with them, on a high place, opposite the entry of the Tent of Meeting.

There is a certain “ancient logic” at work here. After all, the Israelites had manna given to them miraculously every morning along with a nice helping of quail meat. But what about water? Are we to think that the corresponding miraculous supply of water was only given twice, 40 years apart!? Of course not. So to “solve” this problem, the water supply became mobile—a portable drinking fountain.

Evangelicals could write off this bit of biblical “interpretation” as entertaining or just plain silly, but 1 Corinthians 10:4 complicates things—Paul refers to Jesus not just as “the rock” but “the accompanying rock.”

Paul, a Jewish interpreter, is showing his familiarity with and acceptance of this creative Jewish handling of the “water from a rock” incident.

Let me put a finer point on that: the Old Testament says nothing about a portable supply of water from a rock, but Paul does. Paul says something about the Old Testament that the Old Testament doesn’t say. He wasn’t following the evangelical rule of “grammatical-historical” contextual interpretation. He was doing something else—something odd (for us), something ancient and Jewish.

Once I saw this, I knew the Bible was no longer protected under glass. It was out there, part of an ancient world I really didn’t understand—and was never really prepared to handle.

For Paul—an inspired apostle—to accept such a strange legend and treat it as fact is not something that can be easily brought into an evangelical framework. “But Paul is inspired by God! He would never say something like this!!”

But he did.

And it struck me that Paul probably couldn’t get a job teaching at the seminary that taught me about Paul.

This aha moment didn’t happen in isolation. It came in the context of years of pretty intense and in-depth doctoral work where my main area of focus was Second Temple biblical interpretation. But here, at this moment, the light turned on, some tumblers clunked heavily into place, and I was seeing a bigger picture, not just about this one verse but about the Bible as a whole.

I was seeing right before my eyes that Paul and the other New Testament writers were part of this ancient world of Jewish traditions of biblical interpretation. And what seems so odd to us was right at home in Paul’s 1st century world.

Evangelical attempts to make Paul sound more evangelical and less Jewish—to make him into a “sound” interpreter of scripture—immediately rang hollow, and continue to.

And I knew back then, as I do now, that the model of biblical interpretation I had been taught was not going to cut it if I was going to try to explain how my Bible works rather than defend a Bible that doesn’t exist. I couldn’t deny what I was seeing. I knew I had some thinking to do.

That happened nearly 30 years ago, and the memory is still vivid. And it’s fair to say this aha moment, along with others before and since, have shaped my life’s work of trying to understand the Bible rather than defend it. And that is, to me, much more interesting, meaningful, and spiritually enriching.

My First Big, Can’t-Get-Out-Of-It, “Aha” Moment with the Bible

I don’t know what to think about the “traveling rock” idea, but I certainly agree with Enns that digging into the Bible and historical context is more interesting than merely reading the passages without considering historical context.

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