DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS

Exodus 15:22-16:1          (01/11)           Third Reading at the Vigil of the Feast of Theophany

 

Types of the Gospel ~ The Tree: Exodus 15:22-16:1, especially vs. 25:“So he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree.  When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.”  Consider the sweetening of the water of Marah in this passage from the Exodus account and notice how carefully Moses records the string of encampments by the people of Israel after they celebrated their Baptismal liberation with singing and dancing (Ex. 15:1-21): First, they entered the wilderness of Shur going three days away from the Red Sea until they came to Marah, the spring of bitterness (Ex. 15:22-23).  There God revealed to Moses the means for sweetening the water, but there the Lord also announced a statute and an ordinance for the People to keep diligently thereafter (vss. 25-26).

The people continued on to Elim with its twelve springs and seventy palm trees (vs. 27).  Leaving Elim, they next entered the wilderness of Sin (vs. 16:1); and at last, on the peninsula of Sinai, they made their long, historic encampment at the foot of the Mountain where they received God’s Law with its requirements of a host of exacting sacrifices and regulations (Ex. 19-40).

Origen, the insightful master of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, observes that “If we follow only the simple record of facts, it does not edify us much to know to what place they came first and to what place second.”  But he bids us remember: there are no accidents, no incidental bits of information in Holy Scripture.  Rather, we are to read that we may be led to inquire, “What significance, then, is there in the deliberate accounting of the camp sites?”

Origen encourages prying “...into the mystery lying hidden in these matters [until] we discover the order of faith.”  The order of faith to which the wise catechist refers is the Gospel, which contrasts with commandments as an archetype to a type.  Similarly, the manna that would be eaten in the wilderness is a type of the true Bread of Christ our Savior (Jn. 6:49-50); and the passage through the sea is a type of cleansing Baptism - as the Apostle Paul notes (1 Cor. 10:2).

The campsite at Marah received its name because the water there was unpalatably bitter,  marah being the word for bitterness in Hebrew.  The site is the present day Howdra, still a pool of bitter, salty water that the Bedouins consider the worst in the whole region.  But prying into this as a type, connect the bitter water with the Lord’s appeal to the People: “...diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is pleasing in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His ordinances...” (Ex. 15:26).  What refreshment is there in drinking the cup of pure law and commandment, when you consider how sin makes every commandment that it  touches bitter.  Law in the environment of sin creates despair, prompts us to cry out to the Lord, as did Moses (vs. 25).  But, at bitter Marah, God reveals a tree to be cast into the water, a tree that will turn the bitter water of the Law into the sweet fount of the Gospel.  Are we not speaking of the Tree of the Cross by which God Himself has sweetened our sin and bitterness of soul?

After Marah, Israel went on to a place of twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, to Elim (vs. 27).  Following the pattern of the type already suggested, recognize now the need to pass from the bitterness of choking laws to the abundant waters of the Twelve Apostolic springs and to the food of the righteous Seventy who preached the saving word of Christ our God.  As Origen expresses it: “So it is not sufficient for the people of God to drink the water of Marah, even though it has been made sweet, even though all the bitterness of the letter has been cast out ‘by the Tree of Life’ and the mystery of the Cross.... They must come also to the New Testament from which they are given a drink without...any difficulty....”  The Gospel reassures us.

Glory to Thee, O Christ our God, Who didst sweeten bitter sin on the Life-giving Tree.

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