A Sabbath Before Sinai

²² On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each one; and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. ²³ He said to them, “This is that which Yahweh has spoken, ‘Tomorrow is a solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to Yahweh. Bake that which you want to bake, and boil that which you want to boil; and all that remains over lay up for yourselves to be kept until the morning.’” ²⁴ They laid it up until the morning, as Moses ordered, and it didn’t become foul, and there were no worms in it. ²⁵ Moses said, “Eat that today, for today is a Sabbath to Yahweh. Today you shall not find it in the field. ²⁶ Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day is the Sabbath. In it there shall be none.” ²⁷ On the seventh day, some of the people went out to gather, and they found none. ²⁸ Yahweh said to Moses, “How long do you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? ²⁹ Behold, because Yahweh has given you the Sabbath, therefore he gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days. Everyone stay in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” ³⁰ So the people rested on the seventh day. ³¹ The house of Israel called its name “Manna”, and it was like coriander seed, white; and its taste was like wafers with honey. ³² Moses said, “This is the thing which Yahweh has commanded, ‘Let an omer-full of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” ³³ Moses said to Aaron, “Take a pot, and put an omer-full of manna in it, and lay it up before Yahweh, to be kept throughout your generations.” ³⁴ As Yahweh commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept. ³⁵ The children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land. They ate the manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan. ³⁶ Now an omer is one tenth of an ephah.