The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 2 — Section 61

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-7.-The water from the rock. The Israelites pursued their journey to the mount of God. It was- 1. By stages-" after their journeys." It is well to discipline the mind to look at life as a succession of stages. "Most people can bear one day's eTil; the thing that breaks one down is the trying to bear on one day the evil of two days, twenty days, a hundred days." 2. According to God's commandment-following still the guiding cloud. 3. It brought them in due course to Rephidim, the scene of a new trial, and of a new theocratic mercy. I. Tim SITUATION. Its horrors ca.n be better imagined than described. 1. The want of water. "There was no water for the people to drink" (ver. 1). Even where water was comparatively abundant, it would be a task of no small difficulty to supply the wants of so immense a multitude. Now they are conducted into a region where water absolutely fails them. The la.st drop in their water-skins is exhausted. There is a famine of the needful element. Scouts bring in the intelligence that the place is one of utter drought, without Gtreams, wells, rivulets, oozing rocks, or any other means of rcnewin" the supplies. Comternation sits on every face. Dismay is in every heart. 2. Tl,e ':_onse1u.ent thirst. "And the people thirsted there for water" (ver. 3). 'l'he pangs of unallayed thirst constitute an intolerable torture. Hunger is attended by gnawings and tearings in one organ of the body-that concerned in the rece1,tion of food. But thirst possesses the whole being. It mounts to the brain. It burns and rages like fever in the blood. Draining the body of its juices, it causes every nerve to throb with acute sufferina. "Heart and flesh" cry out for the boon of water. It has been remarked that "I thirst" was the only expression of bodily suffering wrung frorv our Lord upon the cross. 3. The spi~itual analogue._ God brought the people into_ 1, fiituation in which they not only expenenced acute thirst, but were made to feel that m their sore strait nature could do nothing for them. If left to the resources of nature, they must inevitably perish. They cried for water, but it was not to be had. The depth said, It is not in me. The thirsty sand said, It is not in me. The Mky that was as brass above them said, Jt is not in me. 'l'he dry, <lead rocks around said, It is not in us. From no quarter could they extract so much as a drop of the precious liquid. The analogue to this is the condition of the spirit which has become awakened to the emptiness and unsa.tisfyingness of the world around. it, ?f the finite generally; whic_h feels the need of a higher life than the world can give 1t. In the renewed nature, 1t becomes definitively the thirst for God, for the living God. for his love, his favour, for knowledge of him, for partici;etion in his life (Ps. xlii. 1, 2; !xiii. 1-3). Under con- CH. XVII. 1-7,] THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 63