8. Bread from Heaven (The Life of Moses, 368A-D; ed.
FROM GLORY TO GLORY 95
the message of the Gospel. The springs are the twelve Apostles whom our Lord chose for this purpose, making His word rise up through them as from a spring. One of the prophets, in fact, had foretold that grace would well up from the Apostles, when he said: In the churches bless ye God the Lord, from the fountains of Israel (Ps 67.27). And the sev enty palm-trees would, of course, be those apostles who were chosen over and above the Twelve and sent out into the whole world; for these were of the same number as the palm-trees in the text (Luke 10.1).
8. Bread from Heaven (The Life of Moses, 368A-D; ed.
Danielou, ii. 13 7-140) But there is another fact that we must not pass over with out consideration. After crossing the sea, and after the waters were sweetened for those who were making progress in virtue, after that delightful sojourn near the springs and palm-trees, and after they had drunk from the rock, there occurred a complete shortage of the provisions that they had brought with them from Egypt (Exod. 16.2-3). And so when they had nothing left of the strange food which they had brought from Egypt, there rained down a food from heaven which was always the same and yet always different. It seemed ever the same, and yet in quality it was always differ ent, adapting itself to the desires of the individual. What is the lesson here? It concerns the nature of the measures we must take to purify ourselves from the Egyptian and foreign way of living; we must empty, as it were, the whole sack of our soul of the wicked food which the Egyptians eat.