1 Corinthians 10:4 → Exodus 17:6

At Rephidim, with the people perishing of thirst and ready to stone Moses, the LORD declares, "Behold, I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. And when you strike the rock, water will come out of it for the people to drink" (Exod 17:6) — a real historical provision at the foot of the mountain of revelation, where Yahweh stations Himself by the rock and Moses strikes it at Yahweh's own command. Paul takes up this wilderness narrative and reads it Christologically: "they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ" (1 Cor 10:4). The grammar is decisive — ἡ πέτρα δὲ ἦν ὁ Χριστός, "that rock was Christ" (ἦν, ēn, "was") — identification, not loose analogy; this is why the Connection Method is Typology and not mere Analogy or Longitudinal Theme. The link satisfies all five marks of a valid type: analogical correspondence (the rock yields life-giving water; Christ yields the living water of the Spirit), historicity (a real wilderness rock; a real incarnate Lord), escalation (physical water for mortal life → "spiritual drink" for eternal life; a single struck rock → the Rock who "accompanied them" through the whole journey), pointing-forwardness (the rock struck at God's own command, with Yahweh standing by it, anticipates the Servant struck by God, Isaiah 53:4 — a design disclosed retrospectively rather than marked on the chapter's face), and retrospective interpretation supplied by the inspired apostle himself — Paul does not say the rock prefigured Christ but that it was Christ, the pre-incarnate Son present and provisioning His people under the old covenant (cf. WCF 7.5–6). The telos: Christ is here seen not as a distant antitype to be admired but as the Rock who follows His thirsting people through every wilderness and gives Himself to be drunk — the One in whom whoever drinks "will never thirst" (John 4:14). To behold this Rock is to find Him supremely desirable: the smitten Source from whose wounded side living water perpetually flows, so that beholding His sufficiency becomes drinking, and thirst gives way to satisfied joy in God.