Exodus 16:15

16:15 When ¹  the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ²  “What is it?” because they did not know what it was. ³  Moses said to them, “It is the bread ⁴  that the Lord has given you for food. ⁵ 

Exodus 16:32

16:32 Moses said, “This is what ⁶  the Lord has commanded: ‘Fill an omer with it to be kept ⁷  for generations to come, ⁸  so that they may see ⁹  the food I fed you in the desert when I brought you out from the land of Egypt.’”

Exodus 17:9

17:9 So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our ¹⁰  men and go out, fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”

[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.

[16:32]  ⁶ tn Heb “This is the thing that.”

[16:32]  ⁷ tn Heb “for keeping.”

[16:32]  ⁸ tn Heb “according to your generations” (see Exod 12:14).

[16:32]  ⁹ tn In this construction after the particle expressing purpose or result, the imperfect tense has the nuance of final imperfect, equal to a subjunctive in the classical languages.

[17:9]  ¹¹ tn This could be rendered literally “choose men for us.” But the lamed (ל) preposition probably indicates possession, “our men,” and the fact that Joshua was to choose from Israel, as well as the fact that there is no article on “men,” indicates he was to select some to fight.