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§27 Pauline Preaching: Relating the Exodus to Christian Life (1 Cor. 10:1–13)

Having raised the serious, frightening prospect of disqualification at the end of chapter 9, Paul moves immediately to deliver a midrash on the exodus that is laced with scriptural allusions. The introduction of the story of the exodus wanderings of the Israelites in the wilderness may seem peculiar, but the development is logical; for as Paul used himself and the apostles as a personal lesson on Christian rights and responsibilities in chapter 9, and as he drew images from the athletic games to illustrate and register his teaching (9:24–27), now Paul takes up one of the best-known and most-loved stories from the OT to form analogies to the Corinthian situation in order both to document and to authenticate his instructions.

This section is a brief biblically-based expository sermon. In it Paul depicts Israel during the exodus in such a way as to emphasize the parallels with the situation of the Corinthians. Paul does this to expose and explain the true nature of the circumstances in Corinth: in their ignorance (which is, ironically, their arrogance) the Corinthians are dangerously close to repudiation through divine condemnation. The word “arrogance,” encountered in chapters 4, 5, and 8, does not come up directly in this midrashic interpretation and teaching, but the portrait of the Israelites assumes their presumptuousness in relationship to God and forms a parallel to the attitude of the Corinthians that Paul has already named. Thus, in a manner that seems creative to us today, but that would have been familiar to many of his ancient hearers/readers, Paul applies the exodus story to the state of affairs in Corinth as a further, vivid word of illustrative warning. The particular manner in which Paul tells and retells the exodus events, especially in the way he relates the Corinthian situation to the text, is instructive concerning the character of Christian life.

10:1 / Paul immediately puts the Corinthians on notice with his opening address, For I do not want you to be ignorant …, brothers, that.… The implication of this statement is that the Corinthians are or at least are behaving as if they were ignorant. The word “ignorant” in Greek (agnoein) denotes a lack of knowledge (Gk. gnosis) and might be paraphrased with the word “clueless.” Despite their concern with and claim of wisdom and knowledge, in Paul’s estimation the Corinthians lack both. Even though gentle, this confrontation would be insulting and would cause any who took exception to listen carefully to what Paul was saying.

Then, Paul continues by retelling selected elements of the story of the ancestors of Israel during their wilderness wanderings: that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. The repetition of “all” is the first pair of such all-inclusive references to the Israelites; Paul will continue in verses 2–3 by saying “they were all baptized … they all ate … and [they all] drank.…” Paul uses rhetoric to create a unified picture of Israel, where all equally enjoyed the benefits of deliverance and sustenance that were provided by divine grace. Moreover, by calling the ancestors of Israel “our forefathers,” he connects the experience of the Corinthians with God’s past saving acts throughout the history of Israel and forms the basis for the ensuing analogies that he will develop to instruct the Corinthians.

The references to the cloud and to the passing through the sea recall the story of the deliverance from Egypt in Exodus 13–14. At this point Paul is conjuring up images and the ideas of inclusivity and security in divine care before making creative interpretive use of the story in the verses that follow.

10:2 / Paul says they were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. This statement is remarkable, for it interprets the deliverance of Israel from Egypt by acts of divine grace and power in explicitly anachronistic terms. Judaism knew the practice of baptism in various segments of its constituency: the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to the practice of ritual immersion for religious, ceremonial rites of cleansing in the Qumran community (1QS 3.5–9), and the NT records the ministry of baptism of John the Baptist in the Jordan River. Nevertheless, Paul makes an original set of connections, first, in unifying Israel’s experience of the cloud and the sea; second, in referring to that experience as “baptism”; and, third, in referring to this “baptism” as being baptized into Moses. Paul’s reshaping of the story at this point prepares the way for the dramatic connections he will make in the following verses between the experience of the Israelites, who had all been baptized into Moses, and the experience of the Corinthians, who had all been baptized into Christ.

10:3–4 / As Paul continues, he lays the groundwork for further analogies between the Israelites and the Corinthians by focusing on the eating and drinking of spiritual food and spiritual drink enjoyed by the Israelites in the wilderness (see Exod. 16–17; Num. 20–21). Paul recalls the experience of divine provision of food and drink in an unstated analogy to the Corinthians’ own experience of partaking “spiritual food and drink” in the context of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper will occupy Paul and the Corinthians explicitly in chapter 11, but for now Paul makes only an analogous reference to that particular portion of the community’s life.

The implied analogies in these verses seem appropriate and defensible even to modern readers who might be unfamiliar with Paul’s patterns of argument and reasoning, but as he continues to weave his elaborate web Paul offers a further image and commentary that may not make sense to readers at the turn of the twenty-first century: for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Paul has the story from Exodus 17 in mind, when God instructed Moses to strike a rock, and then water poured out for the people to drink. He may have combined that account with Numbers 21:16–18 (or perhaps he inherited an already amalgamated version of the story) before making his own creative use of the narrative: that rock was Christ. This claim strikes the reader of today as fantastic, although such connections were not considered odd or inappropriate in Paul’s day. Targumic writings (Tosefta Sukkah 3:11; Targum Onqelos Num. 21:16–20), Philo of Alexandria, and Pseudo-Philo all make similar, though original, interpretations of the same OT account. Philo, a contemporary of Paul, interpreted the water-giving rock of the exodus story as the presence of preexistent Wisdom among the wandering Israelites (Allegorical Interpretation 2.86), so Paul’s christological rereading of the story is but one interpretation of the “identity” of God’s saving presence among the Israelites. Paul may be christianizing a standard theme of Jewish wisdom teaching, or he may be appropriating images and ideas from developed wisdom traditions in his own original way.

10:5 / The application of the exodus imagery is done through typological analogy (see typikōs in vv. 6 and 11). The typological analysis and application lay the foundation for the stark warning that comes in verse 5, where Nevertheless resounds with great force. The particular element that Paul emphasizes and develops at this point is perhaps surprising, if not shocking. Having highlighted the blessings of deliverance, sustenance, and divine presence, Paul bluntly states that in spite of the ancestors’ having been “baptized into Moses” and having participated in an archetypal Lord’s Supper and having had Christ among them in the wilderness, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were overthrown in the wilderness with their bodies … scattered over the desert. Thus, according to Paul, baptism, participation in the Lord’s Supper, and even the presence of Christ are not unequivocal assurances against negative divine judgment. To those who might think otherwise, Paul plainly teaches that the sacraments are not magical charms that guarantee an absolute claim on salvation, and the saving presence of Christ is not to be taken for granted.

10:6 / The statements that follow in verses 6–13 work out further application of the midrash by adding and applying other exodus materials to Paul’s basic exhortation. Now the story is brought to bear on the Corinthians in relation to the issues of idolatry and sexual immorality, themes that Paul dealt with explicitly in chapter 8 and in chapters 5–6. Moreover, Paul will return to the matter of idol meat in 10:14–11:1. Here, verse 6 introduces the application in a general manner, as examples, but already specifies the purpose of the lessons being taught through models: to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.

10:7 / This verse applies the scriptural lesson directly to the issue of idolatry: it denounces the pagan revelry of inappropriate eating, drinking, and sexual immorality by quoting a portion of Exodus 32:6 verbatim. As Paul develops this statement one sees that the false focus on the false god(s) results in erroneous behaviors. Relating to anything other than God as the ultimate concern of life will result only in problems.

10:8–10 / These three complementary verses form a trilogy of negative directions against sexual immorality, testing “the Lord,” and grumbling. Paul considers all of these activities as the result of idolatrous concerns that make something other than God the central focus of living. He names these particular behaviors because they are relevant to the Corinthian situation as he has described it in chapters 5–6, 8, and perhaps in 9:3, 12.

Moreover, when these verses report the terrible results of such wrongful behavior, one sees that Paul is issuing a vivid warning, not giving a Bible-story lesson. The mention of the death of twenty-three thousand in a day (in Num. 25:1–9 one reads that twenty-four thousand died) is a graphic illustration of the peril of “idolatry.” The reference is particularly appropriate for the situation in Corinth—with its idolatrous temptations—since the thousands of Israelites died after the men had immoral sexual relations with Moabite women who brought them to the altar of their pagan deity. The mention of the deaths by serpents refers to Numbers 21:4–9 and is explained in context by Paul’s stating that the Israelites grumbled against God. Paul elaborates the matter of Israelite grumbling and divine retribution, however, with the mention of the destroying angel, a curious reference that seems to allude to the events of Numbers 16:46–50 using the language of Exodus 12:23. The implication of this ornamented analogy is that Paul deemed the Corinthians to be grumbling inappropriately as well.

10:11 / Paul explicitly details the application of the exodus story to the Corinthian situation. One should notice at least two significant elements of his explanation. First, Paul’s exegesis of the OT clearly shows that he understands the Scriptures to be typological as a result of the Christ-event. Second, Paul locates himself and the Corinthians at the juncture of the ages, as the NRSV recognizes with the correct translation, “they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come.” The NIV translation, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come, offers interpretation, not translation, although this imprecise rendering is not unique. This verse is generally mistranslated and misunderstood as a reference to either a general summary of all previous times or epochs (“end of the ages”) or a general summary of all previous nonepochal time (“end of the age”). “Fulfillment of the ages” seems to fit the first category of comprehension, not the second.

Nevertheless, both of these understandings fail to take seriously Paul’s apocalyptic-eschatological temporal dualism (see Introduction, pp. 12–15). From this particular perspective one sees that Paul himself understood that he and the Corinthians lived at the point where “the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4) and the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15) were both already present and not yet present. Paul perceives that humanity is located at a time between the cross and the coming of Christ, when the old and new ages are mingled. In this interim the old is already dying and the new is already being born, though the old has not yet passed away and the new has not yet fully arrived.

10:12 / This verse is a summarizing sentence, as one sees from Paul’s opening word, So (Gk. hōste), which is often translated “Therefore” to indicate that Paul is both summarizing and building upon what has gone before. Thus, he issues a sobering warning, probably because of his strong convictions about the danger of the volatile times in which humanity now lives—a time of tremendous importance because both God’s work for salvation and the real and continuing threat of evil opposition to God are present, powerful, and at work in the world.

10:13 / More directly, verse 13 declares that the real crisis (temptation) that is besetting the community is manageable and conquerable. In fact, Paul declares the theological basis of such management: God is faithful (cf. 1:9). God provides the antidote to the reality of temptation that humans necessarily face at the juncture of the ages. There is no avoiding this temptation, but in this overlapping of times God’s saving provision is mixed with the temptation. Paul is confident in God’s sustaining grace. Although one can imagine different ways in which Paul would name this divine provision—the Spirit, Christ, the power of God—the apostle does not name God’s grace at this point; rather, he declares God’s faithfulness. In developing the argument as he does, Paul establishes the necessity of the Corinthians’ being related to the God who saves.

Dealt with in isolation from the passage in which it occurs, this verse is sometimes turned into a quasitheological philosophical explanation of human suffering, evil, and divine will. The statement is elaborate and does perhaps invite such exposition and speculation. Yet, one must see that this verse is not an isolated philosophical statement that purports to delineate intricate facets of life. Paul speaks to the Corinthians in context: They are arrogant, overly self-confident, believing themselves to be “standing firm.” But, Paul says, “Watch out!” The Corinthians are not above the unpleasant complications of normal human existence, and facing that fact they have one hope: the faithfulness of God. God is trustworthy, and even if the situation seems impossible, nothing is beyond God’s power and grace. When the Corinthians confront times of trouble they should not deny their susceptibility to temptation or trust their own superspirituality to see them through. Rather, they need to remember, to know, and to act on the one ultimate assurance that is their real security: God is faithful. The tendency to overread this verse is a temptation within itself, but despite the mysterious matters that it raises, the plain sense of the verse is a call to recognize and to trust God.