Exodus 16:11-21

16:11 and the Lord spoke to Moses: 16:12 “I have heard the murmurings of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘During the evening ¹  you will eat meat, ²  and in the morning you will be satisfied ³  with bread, so that you may know ⁴  that I am the Lord your God.’” ⁵ 

16:13 In the evening the quail ⁶  came up and covered the camp, and in the morning a layer of dew was all around the camp. 16:14 When ⁷  the layer of dew had evaporated, ⁸  there on the surface of the desert was a thin flaky substance, ⁹  thin like frost on the earth. 16:15 When ¹⁰  the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ¹¹  “What is it?” because they did not know what it was. ¹²  Moses said to them, “It is the bread ¹³  that the Lord has given you for food. ¹⁴ 

16:16 “This is what ¹⁵  the Lord has commanded: ¹⁶  ‘Each person is to gather ¹⁷  from it what he can eat, an omer ¹⁸  per person ¹⁹  according to the number ²⁰  of your people; ²¹  each one will pick it up ²²  for whoever lives ²³  in his tent.’” 16:17 The Israelites did so, and they gathered – some more, some less. 16:18 When ²⁴  they measured with an omer, the one who gathered much had nothing left over, and the one who gathered little lacked nothing; each one had gathered what he could eat.

16:19 Moses said to them, “No one ²⁵  is to keep any of it ²⁶  until morning.” 16:20 But they did not listen to Moses; some ²⁷  kept part of it until morning, and it was full ²⁸  of worms and began to stink, and Moses was angry with them. 16:21 So they gathered it each morning, ²⁹  each person according to what he could eat, and when the sun got hot, it would melt. ³⁰ 

[16:12]  ¹ tn Heb “during the evenings”; see Exod 12:6.

[16:12]  ² sn One of the major interpretive difficulties is the comparison between Exod 16 and Num 11. In Numbers we find that the giving of the manna was about 24 months after the Exod 16 time (assuming there was a distinct time for this chapter), that it was after the erection of the tabernacle, that Taberah (the Burning) preceded it (not in Exod 16), that the people were tired of the manna (not that there was no bread to eat) and so God would send the quail, and that there was a severe tragedy over it. In Exod 16 both the manna and the quail are given on the same day, with no mention of quail on the following days. Contemporary scholarship generally assigns the accounts to two different sources because complete reconciliation seems impossible. Even if we argue that Exodus has a thematic arrangement and “telescopes” some things to make a point, there will still be difficulties in harmonization. Two considerations must be kept in mind: 1) First, they could be separate events entirely. If this is true, then they should be treated separately as valid accounts of things that appeared or occurred during the period of the wanderings. Similar things need not be the same thing. 2) Secondly, strict chronological order is not always maintained in the Bible narratives, especially if it is a didactic section. Perhaps Exod 16 describes the initiation of the giving of manna as God’s provision of bread, and therefore placed in the prologue of the covenant, and Num 11 is an account of a mood which developed over a period of time in response to the manna. Num 11 would then be looking back from a different perspective.

[16:12]  ³ tn The verb means “to be sated, satisfied”; in this context it indicates that they would have sufficient bread to eat – they would be full.

[16:12]  ⁴ tn The form is a Qal perfect with the vav (ו) consecutive; it is in sequence with the imperfect tenses before it, and so this is equal to an imperfect nuance. But, from the meanings of the words, it is clear that this will be the outcome of their eating the food, a divinely intended outcome.

[16:12]  ⁵ sn This verse supports the view taken in chap. 6 concerning the verb “to know.” Surely the Israelites by now knew that Yahweh was their God. Yes, they did. But they had not experienced what that meant; they had not received the fulfillment of the promises.

[16:13]  ¹ sn These are migratory birds, said to come up in the spring from Arabia flying north and west, and in the fall returning. They fly with the wind, and so generally alight in the evening, covering the ground. If this is part of the explanation, the divine provision would have had to alter their flight paths to bring them to the Israelites, and bring them in vast numbers.

[16:14]  ¹ tn Heb “and [the dew…] went up.”

[16:14]  ² tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated as a temporal clause to the main clause; since that clause calls special attention to what was there after the dew evaporated.

[16:14]  ³ sn Translations usually refer to the manna as “bread.” In fact it appears to be more like grain, because it could be ground in hand-mills and made into cakes. The word involved says it is thin, flakelike (if an Arabic etymological connection is correct). What is known about it from the Bible in Exodus is that it was a very small flakelike substance, it would melt when the sun got hot, if left over it bred worms and became foul, it could be ground, baked, and boiled, it was abundant enough for the Israelites to gather an omer a day per person, and they gathered it day by day throughout the wilderness sojourn. Num 11 says it was like coriander seed with the appearance of bdellium, it tasted like fresh oil, and it fell with the dew. Deut 8:3 says it was unknown to Israel or her ancestors; Psalm 78:24 parallels it with grain. Some scholars compare ancient references to honeydew that came from the heavens. F. S. Bodenheimer (“The Manna of Sinai,” BA 10 [1947]: 2) says that it was a sudden surprise for the nomadic Israelites because it provided what they desired – sweetness. He says that it was a product that came from two insects, making the manna a honeydew excretion from plant lice and scale insects. The excretion hardens and drops to the ground as a sticky solid. He notes that some cicadas are called man in Arabic. This view accounts for some of the things in these passages: the right place, the right time, the right description, and a similar taste. But there are major difficulties: Exodus requires a far greater amount, it could breed worms, it could melt away, it could be baked into bread, it could decay and stink. The suggestion is in no way convincing. Bodenheimer argues that “worms” could mean “ants” that carried them away, but that is contrived – the text could have said ants. The fact that the Bible calls it “bread” creates no problem. לֶחֶם (lekhem) is used in a wide range of meanings from bread to all kinds of food including goats (Judg 13:15-16) and honey (1 Sam 14:24-28). Scripture does not say that manna was the only thing that they ate for the duration. But they did eat it throughout the forty years. It simply must refer to some supernatural provision for them in their diet. Modern suggestions may invite comparison and analysis, but they do not satisfy or explain the text.

[16:15]  ¹ tn The preterite with vav consecutive is here subordinated to the next verb as a temporal clause. The main point of the verse is what they said.

[16:15]  ² tn Heb “a man to his brother.”

[16:15]  ³ tn The text has: מָן הוּא כִּי לאֹ יָדְעוּ מַה־הוּא (man hu’ ki lo’ yadÿ’u mah hu’). From this statement the name “manna” was given to the substance. מָן for “what” is not found in Hebrew, but appears in Syriac as a contraction of ma den, “what then?” In Aramaic and Arabic man is “what?” The word is used here apparently for the sake of etymology. B. S. Childs (Exodus [OTL], 274) follows the approach that any connections to words that actually meant “what?” are unnecessary, for it is a play on the name (whatever it may have been) and therefore related only by sound to the term being explained. This, however, presumes that a substance was known prior to this account – a point that Deuteronomy does not seem to allow. S. R. Driver says that it is not known how early the contraction came into use, but that this verse seems to reflect it (Exodus, 149). Probably one must simply accept that in the early Israelite period man meant “what?” There seems to be sufficient evidence to support this. See EA 286,5; UT 435; DNWSI 1:157.

[16:15]  ⁴ sn B. Jacob (Exodus, 454-55) suggests that Moses was saying to them, “It is not manna. It is the food Yahweh has given you.” He comes to this conclusion based on the strange popular etymology from the interrogative word, noting that people do not call things “what?”

[16:15]  ⁵ sn For other views see G. Vermès, “‘He Is the Bread’ Targum Neofiti Ex. 16:15,” SJLA 8 (1975): 139-46; and G. J. Cowling, “Targum Neofiti Ex. 16:15,” AJBA (1974-75): 93-105.

[16:16]  ¹ tn Heb “the thing that.”

[16:16]  ² tn The perfect tense could be taken as a definite past with Moses now reporting it. In this case a very recent past. But in declaring the word from Yahweh it could be instantaneous, and receive a present tense translation – “here and now he commands you.”

[16:16]  ³ tn The form is the plural imperative: “Gather [you] each man according to his eating.”

[16:16]  ⁴ sn The omer is an amount mentioned only in this chapter, and its size is unknown, except by comparison with the ephah (v. 36). A number of recent English versions approximate the omer as “two quarts” (cf. NCV, CEV, NLT); TEV “two litres.”

[16:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “for a head.”

[16:16]  ⁶ tn The word “number” is an accusative that defines more precisely how much was to be gathered (see GKC 374 §118.h).

[16:16]  ⁷ tn Traditionally “souls.”

[16:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “will take.”

[16:16]  ⁹ tn “lives” has been supplied.

[16:18]  ¹ tn The preterite with the vav (ו) consecutive is subordinated here as a temporal clause.

[16:19]  ¹ tn The address now is for “man” (אִישׁ, ’ish), “each one”; here the instruction seems to be focused on the individual heads of the households.

[16:19]  ² tn Or “some of it,” “from it.”

[16:20]  ¹ tn Heb “men”; this usage is designed to mean “some” (see GKC 447 §138.h, n. 1).

[16:20]  ² tn The verb וַיָּרֻם (vayyarum) is equivalent to a passive – “it was changed” – to which “worms” is added as an accusative of result (GKC 388-89 §121.d, n. 2).

[16:21]  ¹ tn Heb “morning by morning.” This is an example of the repetition of words to express the distributive sense; here the meaning is “every morning” (see GKC 388 §121.c).

[16:21]  ² tn The perfect tenses here with vav (ו) consecutives have the frequentative sense; they function in a protasis-apodosis relationship (GKC 494 §159.g).