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Types of Christ.
The rock and the brazen serpent are evident types of Christ. In the earliest history of
Israel, the smiting of the rock had been by divine command:--
"Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock of Horeb; and thou shalt smite
the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink" (Exod. 17: 6).
When once more water was to be brought out of the rock at the end of the forty years'
pilgrimage, no command was given to strike it again. The sacrifice of Christ is never to
be repeated. There shall be in the day of Israel's return a fountain opened for sin and
uncleanness, and they shall look upon Him Whom they pierced, but they shall never
pierce Him again. The striking of the rock in the second place is an O.T. parallel of the
awful words of Heb. 6: 6: "They crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh."
The second great type of this section is the brazen serpent. Again the people murmur
(21: 5), and use very similar expressions to those recorded in 20: 3-5, yet in chapter 20:
no punishment follows, while in chapter 21: the murmuring is immediately followed by
the judgment of the fiery serpents. It will be remembered that earlier still the people had
murmured, and had been visited with dire judgment. Is there anything in the passage to
account for this? There is one thing common to the two passages recording that
punishment is absent, and that is a slighting reference to the manna:--
"But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our
eyes" (Numb. 11: 6).
"Our soul loatheth this light bread" (Numb. 21: 5).
What expressions are here, when speaking of the gift of God--the corn of heaven,
angels' food.
The chapter in John which speaks so much of the manna, and of Christ as the true
bread that came down from heaven, shows the spiritual equivalent of this loathing of the
manna, and the "dried up" soul:--
"This is a hard (dried up) saying" (said many of His disciples), "who can hear it . . . . .
the words I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life" (John 6: 60-63).
Murmuring is evil enough, but when it takes the form of loathing the gift of God and
the type of Christ, judgment falls.
When Israel sinned and broke the law at the foot of Sinai the Lord's reply was, in
effect, "Make an ark". Here, the only remedy is: "Make a fiery serpent and set it upon a
pole." Here is a most precious anticipation of those statements in the epistles that reveal
that the curse of the law can only be removed by one dying under a curse (Gal. 3: 13), or
that reconciliation can only be accomplished by imputing sin to the One Who knew no
sin:--