Many commentators suggest that Paul borrows his notion of a Christological Rock that follows Israel through the wilderness from intertestamental commentary on the OT. That may be, but the notion of is already evident in the OT itself. Yahweh after all is the Rock of Israel, and both leads and serves as rear guard for the people.
Isaiah 32:2 hints at the connection between Yahweh the Rock and Yahweh the glory-pillar. Describing the princes who will rule Zion in justice, Isaiah implicitly compares the princes to Yahweh. Like Yahweh, the princes will be “like the shade of a rock of glory in an exhausted land.” The reference is clearly to Yahweh the Rock in the wilderness, and that reference to the Rock doubles with a reference to the Lord’s kabed , His glory. Yahweh is Rock and Glory, the Glory-Rock of Israel.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
