Exodus16chapter 16

Exodus 16:1-2

Numbers 33:3 dates the departure from Egypt to the fifteenth day of the first month, so the fifteenth of the second month is a month to the day since they walked out. Whatever food came out of Egypt has run out on schedule. This is the third of four complaints in four chapters, after the sea at 14:11 and the bitter water at 15:24, and the fourth comes at Rephidim in 17:2.

Exodus 16:3

The memory has been rewritten in a month. Exodus 2:23 has these people sighing by reason of the bondage and crying out, and here the same bondage is remembered as flesh pots and bread to the full. They also charge Moses with an intention, that he brought them out to kill the whole assembly with hunger, which is the accusation the sea drew from them at 14:11.

Exodus 16:4-5

The phrase bread from heaven occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and Psalm 78:24 repeats it before John 6:31 puts it in the mouth of a crowd asking Jesus for a sign. At John 6:32 and 6:33 he answers that Moses gave them not that bread from heaven and sets the true bread against it, which makes this verse one of the places where the New Testament takes up an Exodus line itself. The provision is also described as a test, a certain rate every day that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, and no law has yet been given at Sinai.

Exodus 16:6-7

The answer is split across a day, flesh at evening and sight in the morning. The phrase glory of the LORD occurs for the first time in Scripture at verse 7, and it returns on the mountain at 24:16 and on the finished tabernacle at 40:34. Moses and Aaron will not take the complaint as their own, asking what are we, that ye murmur against us.

Exodus 16:8-9

Moses says twice in one verse where the murmuring has actually landed, that it is not against us, but against the LORD. The complaint was addressed to two men in the camp and it is answered by God directly. Aaron's summons then puts a grumbling crowd in the posture of an assembly, come near before the LORD, before anything has been given them.

Exodus 16:10-11

The glory appears in the cloud that has gone before them since 13:21, so the pillar they have followed for a month turns out to have something inside it. They are told to look toward the wilderness, which is the direction of the emptiness they had just complained about. The same glory settles on Sinai at 24:16 and fills the tabernacle at 40:34, and in every case it arrives in a cloud.

Exodus 16:12-13

The stated purpose of the food is knowledge, ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which is the sentence the plagues kept saying to Egypt at 7:5 and to Israel at 6:7. Quails come up at evening and cover the camp, and dew lies round about the host in the morning. Numbers 11:31 to 11:33 records quails a second time and there the same provision ends in a plague, which is the difference between the two books: in Exodus a complaint is answered with food, and in Numbers it is answered with judgment.

Exodus 16:14-15

The description comes before the name, a small round thing as small as the hoar frost on the ground. What the people say to one another is a question, and the text says outright that they wist not what it was, so the food is called after the puzzle it caused. The word manna occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and Moses answers with a source rather than a substance, this is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat, which is the answer John 6:32 takes up.

Exodus 16:16-18

The measure is an omer a head, reckoned by appetite and by the number of persons in a tent rather than by standing. Verse 18 reports the outcome, that he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack. Paul quotes that line at 2 Corinthians 8:15 when he asks one church to even out a collection for another, so the gathering is unequal and the result is not.

Exodus 16:19-20

The one rule attached to the bread is that it cannot be stored, so a people anxious about tomorrow are handed exactly one day at a time. Some keep it back anyway and it breeds worms and stinks, which is the first recorded disobedience after the sea. Moses was wroth with them, and the text records nothing further done about it.

Exodus 16:21-22

The window is short, since what is left on the ground when the sun waxes hot melts away. On the sixth day twice as much comes up and the rulers of the congregation come and tell Moses about it, which means the people had not been told what God said to him at verse 5. The double portion arrives before anyone knows what it is for.

Exodus 16:23-24

The word sabbath occurs here for the first time in Scripture, four chapters before the fourth commandment at 20:8 tells Israel to remember it. Genesis 2:2 and 2:3 have God resting on the seventh day, blessing it and sanctifying it, and never use the noun. The order matters, because by the time Sinai says remember the sabbath day the people have weeks of bread that fell on six mornings and not on the seventh, and the older commentators take the manna as the sabbath taught by practice before it is given as law.

Exodus 16:25-26

What was laid up overnight and did not stink is the day's food, so the sixth day's work feeds the seventh day's rest. The instruction is also negative, that to day ye shall not find it in the field, so the rest holds because nothing is there rather than because anyone resisted going out. Six days ye shall gather it, and on the seventh there shall be none, which is the shape Genesis 2:2 gave the week.

Exodus 16:27-28

Some go out on the seventh day anyway and find nothing, so the question is settled by an empty field rather than by a penalty. God's reply names commandments and laws in the plural at a point before Sinai, and readers have long divided over what those were. Some take them as the instructions given in this chapter, others as commands known from the fathers, and the verse itself does not say.

Exodus 16:29-30

The day is described as something given, and the double portion on the sixth day is given because the rest is given. The restriction that follows, abide ye every man in his place, is read by most commentators as staying out of the field rather than staying indoors, and the later rabbinic sabbath limit on how far a man may walk is drawn from this verse. Verse 30 reports the people resting on the seventh day, which is the first rest the narrative records of anyone but God.

Exodus 16:31-32

The house of Israel keeps its own question as the name of the food, which the people had already used of it at verse 15. The description is domestic, like coriander seed, white, with the taste of wafers made with honey, and Numbers 11:7 and 11:8 describe it again as the colour of bdellium tasting of fresh oil, by which point the people are tired of it. An omer of it is to be filled and kept so that a later generation can see the bread rather than be told about it.

Exodus 16:33-34

The pot is laid up before the Testimony, and the word testimony occurs here for the first time in Scripture. Neither the ark nor the tabernacle exists yet, so commentators read verse 34 as recording where the pot ended up rather than where it was first set down. Hebrews 9:4 names the golden pot that had manna among the things kept in the ark.

Exodus 16:35-36

The supply runs the whole wilderness period, and Joshua 5:12 records the morning it stopped, the day after they ate of the old corn of the land at Gilgal. Bread fell from heaven for exactly as long as there was no other bread. The chapter then defines an omer as the tenth part of an ephah, which is a line written for readers who no longer measured that way.