EXODUS 15:25 — KING JAMES VERSION 0 0
“And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,”
Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. The wood that sweetens the bitter water is one of the most suggestive images in the Exodus narrative. It has no magical property — the sweetening comes from God's command, not from the wood itself. But the image of wood thrown into bitter water making it sweet has carried symbolic weight in Christian interpretation from the earliest centuries: the tree of the cross thrown into the bitterness of human existence making it fit for drinking, for life. 1 Peter 2:24 says he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. Whether or not Moses' piece of wood consciously foreshadows the cross, its function — making the undrinkable drinkable — is precisely what the cross accomplishes for human existence.
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