Verse 2
And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
By this bold comparison, Paul made the marvelous deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea from the pursuing armies of Pharaoh as a figure, or type, of Christian baptism. It should be carefully noted that the figure in evidence here is not baptism, that being the reality of which the great deliverance of Israel was the figure. Nowhere in the New Testament is baptism ever referred to as any kind of "figure" or "sign." "The voluntary character of that baptism is suggested by the aorist middle,"[5] as in Acts 22:16; Acts 2:38, where the meaning is "have yourselves baptized."[6]
Bruce presented the analogy between Israel and Christians thus:
Their (the Christians') baptism is the antitype of Israel's passage through the Red Sea; their sacrificial feeding on Christ by faith is the antitype of Israel's nourishment with manna and the water from the rock; Christ the living Rock is their guide through the wilderness; the heavenly rest before them (the Christians) is the counterpart to the earthly Canaan which was the goal of the Israelites.[7]
As the next verse indicates, there is also a reference to the Lord's Supper in Paul's analogy.
[5] Paul W. Marsh. A New Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1969), p. 394.
[6] W. E. Vine, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940), p. 97.
[7] F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), p. 62.
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