Then the angel of the LORD put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the LORD departed out of his sight.
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
Gideon, moved by that message, when he heard that though thousands of the people failed, God would deliver his own from their enemies by means of one man, offered a kid, and according to the word of the angel, laid its flesh and the unleavened cakes upon the rock and poured the broth upon them. And as soon as the angel touched them with the end of the staff which he bore, fire burst forth out of the rock, and so the sacrifice which he was offering was consumed. By which it seems clear that that rock was a figure of the body of Christ, for it is written: “They drank of that rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” This certainly refers not to his Godhead but to his flesh, which watered the hearts of the thirsting people with the perpetual stream of his blood.
Even at that time was it declared in a mystery that the Lord Jesus in his flesh would, when crucified, do away the sins of the whole world, and not only the deeds of the body but the desires of the soul. For the flesh of...
“But I say to you that whoever looks on a woman lustfully has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” “The pus is wiped off,” therefore, when sin is not only severed from the deed but also from the thought. It is hence that Jerubbaal saw the angel when he was winnowing corn from the chaff, at whose request he immediately prepared a kid and set it upon a rock and poured over it the broth of the flesh, which the angel touched with a rod and fire came out of the rock and consumed it. For what else is it to beat corn with a rod, but to separate the grains of virtues from the chaff of vices with an upright judgment? But to those that are thus employed the angel presents himself, in that the Lord is more ready to communicate interior truth to the extent that people are more earnest in ridding themselves of external things. And he orders a kid to be killed, that is, every appetite of the flesh to be sacrificed, and the flesh to be set upon a rock and its broth to be poured upon it....
