Israel’s Fall in the Wilderness

…written: “Do not despise one of these little ones, for their angels always behold the face of the Father” (Matthew 18:10). How then is it not very grievous that we should be accused even by the holy angels themselves, as those who all but leap on the weaknesses of the brothers, and do not rather take pains to strengthen their weak conscience?

Tome 4, Discourse 3.

“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud” (1 Corinthians 10:1). Having charged those who supposedly have perfect knowledge not to eat sacrificial meat, Paul now tries to persuade them, from what befell the people of old, that the practice is not profitable but rather dangerous, and that it is not without harm to rush in among those accustomed to doing wrong. For it carries one off to do what is not lawful, since the human mind is easily shaken, little by little, toward what is not fitting.

So he takes no unlovely image of the matter, indeed a very close likeness: what happened in the wilderness to those of the blood of Israel. And he shows very forcefully that wanting to live with unbelievers would not be without harm even for those who stand firm.

What he says is this: those who had been freed from slavery were made perfect through the cloud in the sea, with the cloud hanging over them in their midst and Moses acting as mediator (compare 1 Corinthians 10:2). They ate the bread from heaven; they drank the life-giving drink; for Christ gave them drink, being himself the rock (compare 1 Corinthians 10:3–4). For he is unbreakable as God, even though he willingly suffered the assault of death. We say that such things are prefigurings of a spiritual reality.

And what happened to the people of old after this? In what way did they stumble? They were defiled at Shittim, they served idols, they were initiated into the rites of Baal of Peor (Numbers 25:1–3; Psalm 106:28). See, then, how those baptized in the cloud and in the sea, though they had eaten the bread from heaven and drunk the spiritual drink, became entangled with the idolaters. Because they shared meals with them and touched the table of the idols, they were at once easily carried away and slid into apostasy, and they danced with women: “And the people who understood were entangled with a prostitute,” in the words of the prophet (Hosea 4:14). For this is what is meant by “they rose up to play” (1 Corinthians 10:7).

So it is dangerous to live in the company of the wicked and the unbelieving. Indeed Solomon said somewhere, “He who walks with the wise will be wise, but he who walks with fools will be known” (Proverbs 13:20).

For we too, before our faith in Christ, were yoked under the greed of the demons and were slaves to the spiritual Pharaoh, that is, to Satan, the author of evil. We toiled for him in vain, standing in the works of the flesh as in clay and brickmaking (compare Exodus 1:14). But “the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6), rescued us too. He brought us too across the surge of this present life, as across a kind of sea, and made us perfect through holy baptism.

For he is the cloud from above, the spiritual cloud, which supplies living water to those who love it; and the living water is the Spirit. Indeed Christ said, “He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). And the inspired evangelist, making the saying plain, at once added to the words about it, “Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” (John 7:39).

We too have eaten the truly life-giving bread, we have drunk the spiritual drink, just as they drank the water from the rock; and the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4), who for us too…