TYPES OF CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2000 James Melough
QUAILS
Exodus
16:13
One month after leaving
Egypt the children of Israel came into the wilderness of Sin (thorn, clay, mire), and
began to murmur against God because they had no bread.
In response to their murmuring God said, “At even ye shall eat flesh, and in
the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your
God. And it came to pass, that at even
the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about
the host. And when the dew that lay was
gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as
small as the hoar frost on the ground,” Ex 16:12-14.
That “small round thing,” of course, was the manna, which is easily
recognized as a type of Christ, the true Bread which came down from heaven, Jn ch.6.
What is not as generally
recognized is that the quail is an equally clear type of Him Who came down from
heaven to give His life as atonement for sin. Closer
examination, however, reveals that He is just as clearly portrayed by the quail as by
the manna.
That small game bird, a
creature of the heavens, and of relatively little value, is a type of Him Who was
also of heaven, and Who was esteemed by man as of little worth.
Its coming at night points
to the Lord’s coming during earth’s spiritual night time; and its coming to
satisfy the hunger of a vast multitude points to His coming to satisfy the spiritual
hunger of the whole world.
But before that bird could
become man’s food its blood must be shed, its life must be given up; and in this is
revealed the truth that Christ must die in man’s guilty stead; His blood must be
shed to make atonement for man’s sin. It
wasn’t until they had eaten the quails that the Israelites were given the manna;
and the truth God would teach us in this is that until Christ is accepted as Savior
He cannot be known as the Bread of life. In
simpler language, Until a man has been born again through faith in Christ he cannot
understand the Bible.
The quail, given only once,
represents Christ given to meet the need of the sinner.
The manna, given every day for Israel’s forty years in the
wilderness, represents Him meeting the daily need of the saint.
The sinner’s appropriation of Christ as Savior is a once,
not-to-be-repeated experience which brings eternal life.
That new life, however, must be nourished by a daily intake of spiritual food,
the written Word which is the presentation of Christ the living Word portrayed by the
manna.
NOTE: Numbers 11 records
another giving of quails, but on this second occasion they brought death, and the
spiritual lesson is that Christ refused as Savior must be met eventually as the Judge
Who will inflict the second death by consigning every unbeliever into the eternal
torment of the lake of fire, see Re 2:11; 20:6,14; 21:8.