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New Defender's Study Bible Notes

10:1 all our fathers. Although many of the Corinthian Christians were Gentiles, the Jewish patriarchs were their “fathers” in a spiritual sense, and the Old Testament record is as profitable for Gentiles now as for Jews.


10:1 under the cloud. The “cloud” was the shekinah glory cloud that both guided and protected the Israelites in their exodus from Egypt, while the “sea” was the Red Sea which God miraculously opened for them (Exodus 13:21; 14:29).


10:2 baptized. “Baptized” is simply a transliteration of the Greek baptizo, which means literally “inundated” or “immersed.” Both the cloud and the sea surrounded them, just as the baptismal waters surround a new Christian being “baptized.”


10:4 Rock that followed them. On the typological significance of the water-giving Rock, see notes on Exodus 17:5-6 and Numbers 20:7-12. The water they drank was literal water. The Rock that “followed” them, however, was not a literal rock, but the Spirit of Christ Himself. “He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers” (Psalm 78:16). Evidently, when Moses smote the rock, it opened a great spring which became a continually flowing river, along which the children of Israel marched and camped in the wilderness for forty years. It is also worth noting that the Greek word used here for “Rock” is petra, and that this is the same word that Jesus used when he said that “upon this Rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Christ (not Peter) is the foundation rock upon which the true church is built (I Corinthians 3:11), and He is also the “living water,” the “well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:10,14).


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