The Sweetness of the Cross

Reflections on the Tree of the Cross (1)

(Exodus 15:25-27)  And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.” Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.

The Fathers of the Church read this passage as an allegory of Christ par excellence- the tree which is cast into the water is an allegory of the cross of Christ, which purified the waters of creation so that we might drink in created nature the uncreated glory which is eternal life. Let’s explore this passage in depth.

Remember that the seventy palms are the seventy nations (there being seventy nations in Genesis 10), the twelve springs are the twelve tribes, and the healing of the Lord (which manifests the Name, God’s innermost character and fulfills the purpose of His work: “that my Name might be proclaimed throughout all the Earth”) occurs in the transformation of the waters. God heals Israel and heals the nations through Israel, thus Ezekiel 47: trees bearing fruit in season planted by the river of life which resurrects the Dead Sea, read by John in Revelation as the “leaves” for the “healing of the nations.” So what about the cross of Christ? More than once I have seen this dismissed straightforwardly as patristic eisegesis, or even worse, dismissed through the faux praise of “the creativity of patristic exegesis”, the wink and the nod telling you that the person praising such creativity doesn’t think any of this is actually there in Exodus.