Biblion Bible Commentary
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Bread from Heaven
Exodus 16:1-21
1 They took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. · WEB
A daily ration that cannot be stored teaches a nation to depend on God one day at a time, and the arrangement is called a test.
We wish that we had died by Yahweh's hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots, when we ate our fill of bread Exodus 16:3.
One month out. The memory has already been rewritten: slaves who were worked to exhaustion making brick now recall sitting by meat pots eating their fill. Hunger does this, and the narrative does not pretend the hunger was imaginary — a nation in the wilderness of SIN with no crops and no supply line had a real problem. What it records is how quickly the past reorganizes itself around a present grievance.
Behold, I will rain bread from the sky for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not Exodus 16:4.
The provision is generous and it is also an examination, and the examination is built into its design. A day's portion every day means no reserve, no store, and no independence. God could as easily have filled their bags for a month. Instead the supply arrives each morning and expires each night, which obliges the whole nation to want him again by breakfast.
Your murmurings are not against us, but against Yahweh Exodus 16:8.
Moses corrects the address. The complaints have been aimed at two men for a month, and he tells them the letters have been going to someone else.
In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp; and in the morning the dew lay around the camp Exodus 16:13.
Both halves of the promise arrive on schedule. The morning residue is unrecognizable: a small round thing, small as the frost on the ground, and the people say to one another what is it? Exodus 16:14–15, which is the phrase that becomes its name. They are eating something they cannot classify, and they will do it every day for forty years.
Two rules govern the gathering, and each teaches something the desert would not otherwise teach.
The first is a fixed measure. He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack Exodus 16:18. However hard a household worked, the omer per person came out the same, so the strong could not accumulate and the weak could not fall behind. Paul cites the sentence when urging one church to relieve another's shortage 2 Corinthians 8:15, and the principle he draws from it is exactly the one the wilderness enforced by miracle.
The second is a prohibition on hoarding. Let no one leave of it until the morning Exodus 16:19. Some tried, and the surplus bred worms and became foul Exodus 16:20. The instinct is understandable in people who have just been starving, and it is precisely the instinct the arrangement exists to break. Bread saved against tomorrow rots overnight; bread gathered this morning is enough. It is the shape of the petition Jesus later teaches, which asks for today's bread and not the week's Matthew 6:11.
When the sun grew hot, it melted Exodus 16:21. There was a window, and it was early. Provision was certain and it was not available at any hour a person chose.
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