Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Corinthians 10:4

"and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ." — 1 Corinthians 10:4 (ASV)

That spiritual Rock that followed them.—There was a Jewish tradition that the Rock—that is, a fragment broken off from the rock struck by Moses—followed the Israelites through their journey. Saint Paul, for the purpose of illustration, adopts that account instead of the statement in Numbers 20:11. The emphatic repetition of the word “spiritual” before “drink” and “rock” reminds the reader that it is the spiritual, and not the historical aspect of the fact, which was foremost in Saint Paul’s mind. The traditional account of the Rock was a more complete illustration of the abiding presence of God, which was the point the Apostle here wishes to emphasize.

And that Rock was Christ.—As Christ was God manifest in the flesh in the New Dispensation, so God manifest in the Rock (the source of sustaining life) was the Christ of the Old Dispensation. The Jews had become familiar with the thought of God as a Rock (See 1 Samuel 2:2; Psalms 91:12; Isaiah 32:2). Though the Jews may have recognized the Rock poetically as God, they did not know that it was, as a manifestation of God’s presence, typical of the manifestation that was yet to be given in the Incarnation. This seems to be the significance of the statement and of the word “But,” which emphatically introduces it. But though they thought it only a Rock, or applied the word poetically to Jehovah, that Rock was Christ.