Compare & Correlate · Explicit
The rock that gave water
Water from the rock, twice in the wilderness — and Paul's sentence that the rock was Christ. The rock of Exodus and the rock of Numbers are different words; the rock that followed Israel is in neither, and that row is drawn without an arrow.
Explicit: A later verse makes this link, and it is printed on the arrow.
The rock that gave water. Explicit — a later text makes this connection, and the verse that makes it is printed on the arrow.
The words, as the corpus holds them (each checked present, or absent, in the verses cited beside it):
- צוּר tsur, “rock”
- נָכָה nakhah, “strike”
- מַיִם mayim, “water”
- סֶלַע sela, “rock, crag”
Sources:
- Hebrew words checked against the annotated corpus by tests/test_correlations.py; Greek references checked against SBLGNT for existence only.
- The following rock: the rabbinic tradition of the well that accompanied Israel (Tosefta Sukkah 3:11). Named because Paul's 'followed' comes from it and not from the Pentateuch.
Row by row
| Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 | 1 Corinthians 10 | |
|---|---|---|
| Water from the rock | strike the rock, and water shall come out of itExodus 17:6 | they drank from the spiritual rock1 Corinthians 10:4 |
| Linking verse: 1 Corinthians 10:4 — “and the rock was Christ” | ||
| The second time | speak to the crag — and Moses struck it twiceNumbers 20:11 | Paul does not distinguish the two |
| Exodus 17:6 says tsur, Numbers 20:8 and 11 say sela: two words for the rock, and in Numbers the command was to speak to it. | ||
| A rock that followed | no verse has the rock go with Israel | the spiritual rock that followed them1 Corinthians 10:4 |
| The following rock is the tradition of the well that went with Israel through the wilderness, not a verse of Exodus or Numbers. | ||
Where it appears in the text
- Exodus 17 — water from the rock at Horeb
- Numbers 20 — water from the crag at Meribah
- 1 Corinthians 10 — the rock was Christ
In the app this comparison opens beneath each of those chapters. Open it in TheophilusBible.