Examples in OT of God using matter to convey grace?

[Jennifer79]

Hello! I’m trying to remember times in the Old Testament in which God uses matter/physical/tangible signs to impart grace. The only time I can think of is when as long as Moses’ hands were lifted up they were winning the battle but when they lowered down their side of the battle was losing. I want to show that the idea of God using tangible matter in the sacraments as a means of imparting grace to us is not just something new in the New Testament.

I’m not sure if this is considered typology because I’m not looking for circumcision → baptism or manna → Eucharist.

Thanks!

 

[Wesrock]

I’m sure there are more instances, but 2 Kings 5 always comes to my mind.

5 Na′aman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. 2 Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little maid from the land of Israel, and she waited on Na′aman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samar′ia! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4 So Na′aman went in and told his lord, “Thus and so spoke the maiden from the land of Israel.” 5 And the king of Syria said, “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.”

So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten festal garments. 6 And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Na′aman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” 7 And when the king of Israel read the letter, he rent his clothes and said, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider, and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me.”

8 But when Eli′sha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had rent his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, “Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Na′aman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the door of Eli′sha’s house. 10 And Eli′sha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean.” 11 But Na′aman was angry, and went away, saying, “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and cure the leper. 12 Are not Aba′na and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” So he turned and went away in a rage. 13 But his servants came near and said to him, “My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” 14 So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.

15 Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him; and he said, “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant.”

 

[Stephen_says]

Moses’ Staff-mounted bronze serpent, all who looked upon it were healed.

All the anointings of Kings with oil.

In the book of Tobit, when Tobiah burns the fish organs on the brazier and that exorcises the demons from Sarah.

 

[Vico]

Hello! I’m trying to remember times in the Old Testament in which God uses matter/physical/tangible signs to impart grace.
…

Catholic Encyclopedia

True, even gratuitous Divine gifts may still fall within the range of mere nature. Thus we petition God, under the guidance of the Church, for mere natural graces, as health, favourable weather, deliverance from plague, famine, and war. Now such natural graces, which appear simultaneously as due and gratuitous, are by no means a contradiction in themselves. For, first, the whole creation is for mankind a gratuitous gift of the love of God, whom neither justice nor equity compelled to create the world. And secondly the individual man can, in virtue of his title of creation, lay a rightful claim only to the essential endowments of his nature. Goods granted over and above this class, though belonging to the just demands of human nature in general, have for him the significance of an actual grace, or favour, as, for example, eminent talents, robust health, perfect limbs, fortitude.

Pohle, J. (1909). Actual Grace. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06689x.htm