1 Corinthians 10:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And did all drink the same spiritual That is, typical; drink Namely, typical of Christ and of the living water, the divine influence derived from him, John 8:37. For they drank of that spiritual Or mysterious; rock The wonderful streams of which followed them in their several journeyings for many years through the wilderness. It must be observed, water was twice brought from a rock by a miracle, for the Israelites in the wilderness; once in Rephidim, which was their eleventh station, and in the first year after they came out of Egypt; of which miracle we have an account, Exodus 17.; the second time was at Kadesh, which was their thirty-third station, and in the fortieth year after their leaving Egypt, Numbers 20:1. To both places the name of Meribah was given; but the latter was called Meribah-Kadesh, to distinguish it from Meribah of Rephidim. It is the miracle performed in Rephidim of which the apostle here speaks. The water, it appears, that issued from this rock formed a brook, which (Deu 9:21) is said to have descended out of the mount, that is, out of Horeb; (Exodus 17:5-6;) for before that miracle there was no brook in these parts. And it issued in such abundance as to be termed a river, Psalms 78:16; Psalms 105:41. Indeed, six hundred thousand men, with their women and children, and cattle, required a river to supply them with drink. And Horeb being a high mountain, there seems to have been a descent from it to the sea; and the Israelites, during the thirty-seven years of their journeying, appear to have gone by those tracts of country in which the waters from Horeb could follow them, till in the thirty-ninth year they came to Ezion-Gaber, (Numbers 33:36,) a port of the Red sea, far down the Arabian side, where it is supposed the water from Horeb went into that sea. The country through which the Israelites journeyed so long a time, being watered by this river, produced, no doubt, herbage for the cattle of the Israelites, which, in this desert, must otherwise have perished. And that Rock was Christ A manifest type of him, the Rock of ages, who, being smitten in his death and sufferings, poured forth streams of redemption, grace, and heavenly blessings, which follow his people through all this wilderness, and will end in rivers of pleasure at the right hand of God for ever.