It does not appear that Moses sinned the first time he smote the rock; but the second time, the servant of God was evidently off his guard, and the meekest of men “spake unadvisedly with his lips;” on account of which, both he and Aaron were shut out of the promised land. His sin consisted in entering into a quarrel with the people, instead of asking God for water to quench their thirst. It appears that their chidings had provoked him to anger, and he had lost the spirit of sympathy for their sufferings, and his hard feelings stood like a thick wall between him and the miracle which God was about to work for his own glory and his people’s relief. Neither did he as God commanded him; for instead of simply speaking to the rock, as he was bidden, he smote it twice, with evident agitation of mind; and at the same time, bitterly reproached the people with their rebellion.
Every minister of the gospel is a “drawer of water,” to his congregation, from the “Spiritual Rock” which follows the church. He must be clothed with meekness from Heaven, or the provocations of the people will be apt to embitter his spirit. God would have us minister mercy, in the spirit of his own mercy. “The servant of God must not strive, but be gentle toward all men; in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if, peradventure, God would grant them repentance unto the acknowledging of the truth: and that they might recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.”
The smiting of the rock was intended to open it, that the water might flow. This prefigured the smiting of Christ, “the Rock of Ages,” and “the Shepherd of the sheep.” The shedding of the blood of lambs, and goats, and calves, and bullocks, for the space of four thousand years, faintly shadowed forth the sacrificial passion of our blessed Lord. Their groans and struggles under the slaughtering knife; the sound of the blood, falling into the golden basins, and poured into the flames upon the altar; the noise occasioned in cutting up the victim, and piling the pieces upon the fire and the smoke and vapor ascending from the consuming sacrifice to heaven; all, all, in their own way, foreshadowed the necessity of mangling the body and shedding the blood of Messiah, that pardoning mercy might have an open way to flow to sinners, like the water from the smitten rock; and the agonies of those slaughtered victims were an imperfect type of the agonies of the soul of Jesus, in the garden and on the cross.