Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy 8 tells how water came from a rock in the wilderness, while Deuteronomy 32 changes the image into a rock giving oil. The shift suggests that one story inspired another, moving from basic survival to a symbol of abundance.
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Deuteronomy 8:15
Hebrew Bible
12 When you eat your fill, when you build and occupy good houses, 13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, 14 be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 15 and who brought you through the great, fearful wilderness of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow from hard rock and 16 fed you in the wilderness with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you and eventually bring good to you. 17 Be careful not to say, “My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth.”
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Deuteronomy 32:13
Hebrew Bible
11 Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young, so the Lord spread out his wings and took him, he lifted him up on his pinions. 12 The Lord alone was guiding him, no foreign god was with him. 13 He enabled him to travel over the heights of the earth, and he ate of the produce of the fields. He provided honey for him from the cliffs, and olive oil from the hardest of rocks, 14 butter from the herd and milk from the flock, along with the fat of lambs, rams and goats of Bashan, along with the best of the kernels of wheat; and from the juice of grapes you drank wine. 15 But Jeshurun became fat and kicked; you got fat, thick, and stuffed! Then he deserted the God who made him, and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt.
Date: 6th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The priority of the Song of Moses over Job 29 should be relatively clear from internal clues. The imagery of the oil-producing rock invokes the images of water gushing from the rock as reported in the stories of the Israelites leaving Egypt, which the speeches of Moses recount (Deuteronomy 6:16, 8:15). Deuteronomy 8:15 uses the same adjective to describe the rock as “flinty” as the Song of Moses uses for the oil producing rock (Deuteronomy 32:13). Thus, the inspiration for the oil producing rock in the Song of Moses does not appear to be Job 29:6, but the stories of the water producing rocks. It follows that the apparent literary connection implies that Job 29:6 is an allusion to Deuteronomy 32:13 ..."
Swinney, James Kipp
Intertextual Discourse and the Problem of God: The Intersection of the Speeches of Job and Deuteronomy
(p. 27) Abiline Christian University, 2016
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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