The Twelve Fountains and the Seventy Palms: Elim and the Apostles Sent to Water the Nations
Old Testament: Exodus 15:23, 25, 27
And they came into Mara, and they could not drink the waters of Mara, because they were bitter: whereupon he gave a name also agreeable to the place, calling it Mara, that is, bitterness. ... But he cried to the Lord, and he shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, they were turned into sweetness. ... And the children of Israel came into Elim, where there were twelve fountains of water, and seventy palm trees: and they encamped by the waters.
Old Testament, also: Numbers 33:9
And departing from Mara, they came into Elim, where there were twelve fountains of waters, and seventy palm trees: and there they camped.
New Testament: Luke 6:13; Luke 10:1
And when day was come, he called unto him his disciples; and he chose twelve of them (whom also he named apostles). ... And after these things the Lord appointed also other seventy-two: and he sent them two and two before his face into every city and place whither he himself was to come.
The connection
Three days out from the Red Sea, Israel found water and could not drink it: "they could not drink the waters of Mara, because they were bitter" (Exodus 15:23). Moses cried to the Lord, "and he shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, they were turned into sweetness" (15:25). The next camp was Elim, "where there were twelve fountains of water, and seventy palm trees: and they encamped by the waters" (15:27), and the list of Israel's journeys keeps the same order, "departing from Mara, they came into Elim" (Numbers 33:9). Christ chose "twelve of them (whom also he named apostles)" (Luke 6:13), and afterwards "appointed also other seventy-two: and he sent them two and two before his face into every city" (10:1). The wood that made the bitter water sweet is the tree on which Christ "bore our sins in his body" (1 Peter 2:24), and after it come the twelve fountains and the palms they water. St Augustine reads the whole stage of the journey: "The bitter waters are sweetened by wood, as hostile people become friendly by learning to honor the cross of Christ. The twelve fountains watering the seventy palm trees are a figure of apostolic grace watering the nations." St Jerome says the same: "As wood sweetens Marah so that seventy palm-trees are watered by its streams, so the cross makes the waters of the law lifegiving to the seventy who are Christ's apostles." St Ephrem sings that "Our Lord when he was baptized by John sent forth twelve fountains". The Catechism teaches that the Twelve and the other disciples share in Christ's mission and His power, and in His lot (CCC 765).
Moral sense
Mara comes before Elim, and the wood is what turns one into the other. Israel did not reach the fountains by going round the bitter water; the tree was cast into it, and the same waters were drunk sweet. The Cross does not take a Christian out of the desert, but it changes what the desert tastes like. Israel "encamped by the waters", and the soul that stays near the fountains the Apostles opened, the teaching and the sacraments of the Church, is watered like the palms.
Anagogical sense
The palm is the tree of victory, and John sees the palms again at the end: "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations ... clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands" (Apocalypse 7:9). Their camp is by the waters for ever: "the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life" (7:17). Elim was a resting place on the way; the fountains of the Lamb are the end of the journey.
The Fathers
St Augustine, Reply to Faustus XII.30: "The bitter waters are sweetened by wood, as hostile people become friendly by learning to honor the cross of Christ. The twelve fountains watering the seventy palm trees are a figure of apostolic grace watering the nations." St Jerome, Letter LXIX, to Oceanus, 6: "As wood sweetens Marah so that seventy palm-trees are watered by its streams, so the cross makes the waters of the law lifegiving to the seventy who are Christ's apostles." St Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns for the Epiphany IX: "Our Lord when he was baptized by John sent forth twelve fountains; and they issued forth and cleansed by their streams the defilement of the peoples."
Warrant
Patristic. St Augustine reads Mara's wood as the Cross and Elim's twelve fountains watering seventy palms as apostolic grace watering the nations (Reply to Faustus XII.30); St Jerome joins the wood of Mara and the seventy palms to the Cross and the seventy (Letter LXIX, to Oceanus, 6); St Ephrem makes the twelve fountains the Twelve sent from the Jordan (Hymns for the Epiphany IX), and Tertullian had already matched the twelve fountains to the Twelve and the seventy palms to the seventy (Against Marcion IV.24). The number of the disciples differs in the manuscripts: the Douay, following the Latin, and the Greek text used on this site read seventy-two (hebdomekonta dyo) at Luke 10:1, while the Fathers quoted here read seventy. Checked in the Greek: the Septuagint of Exodus 15:25 has xylon, the tree cast into the water, the word St Peter uses for the Cross (1 Peter 2:24, epi to xylon), and 15:27 has dodeka pegai hydaton kai hebdomekonta steleche phoinikon, twelve springs of water and seventy trunks of palms. The palms in the hands of the multitude at Apocalypse 7:9 are phoinikes, the same word. Dunk found the entry from the fountains of waters, which run from Elim to the Apocalypse.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 765.
The verses
Exodus 15:23 · Exodus 15:25 · Exodus 15:27 · Numbers 33:9 · Luke 6:13 · Luke 10:1
