35 And the children of Israel had manna for their food for forty years, till they came to a land with people in it, till they came to the edge of the land of Canaan.
And you gave your good spirit to be their teacher, and did not keep back your manna from their mouths, and gave them water when they had need of it. Truly, for forty years you were their support in the waste land, and they were in need of nothing; their clothing did not get old or their feet become tired.
And keep in mind the way by which the Lord your God has taken you through the waste land these forty years, so that he might make low your pride and put you to the test, to see what was in your heart and if you would keep his orders or not. And he made low your pride and let you be without food and gave you manna for your food, a thing new to you, which your fathers never saw; so that he might make it clear to you that bread is not man's only need, but his life is in every word which comes out of the mouth of the Lord.
And they went on from the mountains of Abarim, and put up their tents in the lowlands of Moab by Jordan at Jericho; Planting their tents by the side of Jordan from Beth-jeshimoth as far as Abel-shittim in the lowlands of Moab. And in the lowlands of Moab by Jordan at Jericho, the Lord said to Moses,
And Moses went up from the table-lands of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah which is facing Jericho. And the Lord let him see all the land, the land of Gilead as far as Dan; And all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, as far as the Great Sea of the west; And the South, and the circle of the valley of Jericho, the town of palm-trees, as far as Zoar. And the Lord said to him, This is the land about which I made an oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, I will give it to your seed: now I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not go in there.
And he sent down manna like rain for their food, and gave them the grain of heaven. Man took part in the food of strong ones; he sent them meat in full measure.
So they said, What sign do you give us, so that we may see and have faith in you? What do you do? Our fathers had the manna in the waste land, as the Writings say, He gave them bread from heaven. Jesus then said to them, Truly I say to you, What Moses gave you was not the bread from heaven; it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. The bread of God is the bread which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world. Ah, Lord, they said, give us that bread for ever! And this was the answer of Jesus: I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be in need of food, and he who has faith in me will never be in need of drink. But it is as I said to you: you have seen me, and still you have no faith. Whatever the Father gives to me will come to me; and I will not send away anyone who comes to me. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my pleasure, but the pleasure of him who sent me. And this is the pleasure of him who sent me, that I am not to let out of my hands anything which he has given me, but I am to give it new life on the last day. This, I say, is my Father's pleasure, that everyone who sees the Son and has faith in him may have eternal life: and I will take him up on the last day. Now the Jews said bitter things about Jesus because of his words, I am the bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we have seen? How is it then that he now says, I have come down from heaven? Jesus made answer and said, Do not say things against me, one to another. No man is able to come to me if the Father who sent me does not give him the desire to come: and I will take him up from the dead on the last day. The writings of the prophets say, And they will all have teaching from God. Everyone whose ears have been open to the teaching of the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has ever seen the Father; only he who is from God, he has seen the Father. Truly I say to you, He who has faith in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers took the manna in the waste land--and they are dead. The bread which comes from heaven is such bread that a man may take it for food and never see death. I am the living bread which has come from heaven: if any man takes this bread for food he will have life for ever: and more than this, the bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world. Then the Jews had an angry discussion among themselves, saying, How is it possible for this man to give us his flesh for food? Then Jesus said to them, Truly I say to you, If you do not take the flesh of the Son of man for food, and if you do not take his blood for drink, you have no life in you. He who takes my flesh for food and my blood for drink has eternal life: and I will take him up from the dead at the last day. My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. He who takes my flesh for food and my blood for drink is in me and I in him. As the living Father has sent me, and I have life because of the Father, even so he who takes me for his food will have life because of me. This is the bread which has come down from heaven. It is not like the food which your fathers had: they took of the manna, and are dead; but he who takes this bread for food will have life for ever.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Exodus 16
Commentary on Exodus 16 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 16
Ex 16:1-36. Murmurs for Want of Bread.
1. they took their journey from Elim—where they had remained several days.
came unto the wilderness of Sin—It appears from Nu 32:1-42, that several stations are omitted in this historical notice of the journey. This passage represents the Israelites as advanced into the great plain, which, beginning near El-Murkah, extends with a greater or less breadth to almost the extremity of the peninsula. In its broadest part northward of Tur it is called El-Kaa, which is probably the desert of Sin [Robinson].
2. the whole congregation … murmured against Moses and Aaron—Modern travellers through the desert of Sinai are accustomed to take as much as is sufficient for the sustenance of men and beasts during forty days. The Israelites having been rather more than a month on their journey, their store of corn or other provisions was altogether or nearly exhausted; and there being no prospect of procuring any means of subsistence in the desert, except some wild olives and wild honey (De 32:13), loud complaints were made against the leaders.
3. Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt—How unreasonable and absurd the charge against Moses and Aaron! how ungrateful and impious against God! After all their experience of the divine wisdom, goodness, and power, we pause and wonder over the sacred narrative of their hardness and unbelief. But the expression of feeling is contagious in so vast a multitude, and there is a feeling of solitude and despondency in the desert which numbers cannot dispel; and besides, we must remember that they were men engrossed with the present—that the Comforter was not then given—and that they were destitute of all visible means of sustenance and cut off from every visible comfort, with only the promises of an unseen God to look to as the ground of their hope. And though we may lament they should tempt God in the wilderness and freely admit their sin in so doing, we can be at no loss for a reason why those who had all their lives been accustomed to walk by sight should, in circumstances of unparalleled difficulty and perplexity, find it hard to walk by faith. Do not even we find it difficult to walk by faith through the wilderness of this world, though in the light of a clearer revelation, and under a nobler leader than Moses? [Fisk]. (See 1Co 10:11, 12).
4. Then said the Lord unto Moses—Though the outbreak was immediately against the human leaders, it was indirectly against God: yet mark His patience, and how graciously He promised to redress the grievance.
I will rain bread from heaven—Israel, a type of the Church which is from above, and being under the conduct, government, and laws of heaven, received their food from heaven also (Ps 78:24).
that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no—The grand object of their being led into the wilderness was that they might receive a religious training directly under the eye of God; and the first lesson taught them was a constant dependence on God for their daily nourishment.
13-31. at even the quails came up, and covered the camp—This bird is of the gallinaceous kind [that is, relating to the order of heavy-bodied, largely terrestrial birds], resembling the red partridge, but not larger than the turtledove. They are found in certain seasons in the places through which the Israelites passed, being migratory birds, and they were probably brought to the camp by "a wind from the Lord" as on another occasion (Nu 11:31).
and in the morning … a small round thing … manna—There is a gum of the same name distilled in this desert region from the tamarisk, which is much prized by the natives, and preserved carefully by those who gather it. It is collected early in the morning, melts under the heat of the sun, and is congealed by the cold of night. In taste it is as sweet as honey, and has been supposed by distinguished travellers, from its whitish color, time, and place of its appearance, to be the manna on which the Israelites were fed: so that, according to the views of some, it was a production indigenous to the desert; according to others, there was a miracle, which consisted, however, only in the preternatural arrangements regarding its supply. But more recent and accurate examination has proved this gum of the tarfa-tree to be wanting in all the principal characteristics of the Scripture manna. It exudes only in small quantities, and not every year; it does not admit of being baked (Nu 11:8) or boiled (Ex 16:23). Though it may be exhaled by the heat and afterwards fall with the dew, it is a medicine, not food—it is well known to the natives of the desert, while the Israelites were strangers to theirs; and in taste as well as in the appearance of double quantity on Friday, none on Sabbath, and in not breeding worms, it is essentially different from the manna furnished to the Israelites.
32-36. Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations—The mere fact of such a multitude being fed for forty years in the wilderness, where no food of any kind is to be obtained, will show the utter impossibility of their subsisting on a natural production of the kind and quantity as this tarfa-gum [see on Ex 16:13]; and, as if for the purpose of removing all such groundless speculations, Aaron was commanded to put a sample of it in a pot—a golden pot (Heb 9:4)—to be laid before the Testimony, to be kept for future generations, that they might see the bread on which the Lord fed their fathers in the wilderness. But we have the bread of which that was merely typical (1Co 10:3; Joh 6:32).