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The Giving of the Manna The giving of manna to serve the children of Israel for food was an outstanding feature of the Exodus. The imagination of generation upon generation, first of Hebrews and then of Christians, has been stirred by this inexplicable provision of food for a multitude in the otherwise barren wilderness. It is true that modern discovery has established that Sinai in the days of the Exodus was by no means so barren and desolate as the popular expositors conceived it, or as it is now; but even so the marvellous story has lost none of its appeal, and the wonder of it has passed into the language of every day so that "manna from heaven" has become an expression denoting any unexpected and beneficial gift. It was no less so in Old Testament days, for the Psalmist (78.23‑25) sings exultantly "He... rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels' food: he sent them meat to the full". The language is poetic; the Psalmist did not mean to convey that this white substance like "hoar frost upon the ground" is literally eaten in heaven by the glorious angels who in their perfection of spiritual life do always behold the face of the Father. Rather does the Psalmist, in a flight of poetic fervour, attribute the provision and the qualities of the manna to the direct intervention of Heaven at a time of sore necessity, and quite naturally speaks of God as sending down food from His own table to meet the need of His people on earth. Let the narrative be examined in the light of all that the last century can tell us regarding the district in which this thing happened, and the circumstances under which it took place. The wonder of the story will be by no means lessened and our reverence for the Divine power which brought this about just at the time when it was needed will be immeasurably increased. "And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, 'It is manna': for they wist not what it was...And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted...and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." (Exod.16:14,15,21,31). It was after Elim and after the passage of the Red Sea, that the manna first appeared (Exod.16:1) and at Gilgal, following the crossing of Jordan, forty years later, that it ceased (Josh.5 12). During the whole of the intervening period, throughout the length and breadth of Sinai, wherever the people wandered, there was the manna, ready for gathering, fresh every morning, except on the Sabbath. When they dwelt in Egypt, manna was unknown; after they settled in Canaan it was seen no more; the phenomenon was confined entirely to the Sinai peninsula and the green hills of Edom and Moab, but so integral a part of the whole account is this story of the manna that unless we accept the fact that this thing really did happen, we must reject the historical trustworthiness of the entire Exodus narrative. The story never died. Long after the strings of the Psalmist's harp were stilled Nehemiah encouraged his brethren by telling them of the "bread from heaven" (Neh.9:15). Jesus, in His teaching, reminded His hearers that their fathers did eat manna in the wilderness. (John 6:49). The Psalmist's "angels' food" was not able to arrest the processes of death at work in the bodies of the Israelites, and their daily gathering sufficed only to sustain life for another day. Jesus turned their minds to Himself, "the living bread which came down from heaven" (John 6:51) and talked to them about those things without which no man can enter into life. So, in words intended for His disciples of this Age, the consecrated members of the Church of Christ on earth, the resurrected Lord promises (Rev.2:17) to give to "him that overcometh…to eat of the hidden manna"—that spiritual quality, immortality, the Divine nature—of which the earthly manna of the Exodus was but a symbol. The same truth is taught in the fact that a vessel of the literal manna, miraculously preserved, was laid up and preserved in the Most Holy of the Tabernacle throughout Israel's national existence (Exod.16:32‑34; Heb.9:4). There, where the supernatural Shekinah glory blazed out over the mercy‑seat, where the presence of God in His Heaven was symbolised, stood the sacred vessel, century after century, its contents the incorruptible symbol of that "life‑in‑itself" which is to be the inheritance of those who are "faithful unto death" (Rev.2:10). Now what is there known about this manna? Can it be identified today? Did Sinai's hills and valleys no more receive the "bread from heaven" after Israel's hosts had travelled that way and departed? Or was it that God did take hold of something in Nature to meet the needs of the occasion? Through the centuries it has been commonly reported that the
manna of the Exodus is still to be seen in Sinai. The Jewish historian Josephus,
writing in the first century, said that it never disappeared but was even then
to be found in the places where Israel gathered it. In the fifteenth century, a
traveller, Breidenbach, declared that manna was common in the valleys
surrounding Mount Sinai, hanging in drops on twigs and grass and stones, sweet
as honey, and sticky. Since then various travellers have reported finding this
substance and have hazarded various theories as to its origin. It is established
that the Sinai Arabs have known and collected it for centuries, and in the
sixteenth century it could be found on sale in Cairo. In the eighteenth century
it was observed that the substance is connected with, and found upon the
tamarisk tree, and Burckhardt, the nineteenth century traveller, describes it
thus:— The Arabic name for this substance is "manu" and this has been its name so far back as it can be traced. The writer of Exodus says that the children of Israel called it "manna" "for they wist not what it was". The Hebrew word is man hu—"What is this?" Appropriately enough, however, it is the glory of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem finally to have cleared up the question of manna. Dr. Bodenheimer, of that University, has investigated the problem upon the spot and published a book on the subject, illustrated by photographs. The manna, it is definitely established, is produced by two insects which feed upon the tamarisk tree. They bear the somewhat terrifying names of Trabutina mannipara and naiacoccus serpentinus minor. Just as bees visit flowers to produce honey, so do these insects live on the tree and from its sweet juices manufacture manna. Dr. Bodenheimer has photographed them in actual process of producing manna in beads varying in size from pinheads to peas ("like coriander seed, white"). At first the beads are transparent as glass and later they crystallise, becoming milk‑white to yellow‑brown. They are found all over the leaves and twigs on the ground, and are soon carried off by ants. The modern counterpart of Moses' golden vessel of manna is now in the University, where glass vials of the "bread from heaven" are preserved. But in thus identifying the manna we have not disposed of Divine intervention and reduced this wonderful story to the mere level of a commonplace happening which might be repeated any day. The scanty amount of manna which Sinai produces at the present time would not feed a hundredth part of Israel's multitudes. We need the fruits of research in other directions fully to illuminate this wonderful story. The first chapter of Numbers gives the number of men of twenty years and upwards, able to go to war, as being 603,550. The twenty‑sixth chapter gives the number entering into the land, forty years later, as 601,730. These figures are confirmed by the numbers accredited to each tribe and it makes nonsense of the record to assert, as do some modern scholars, that the word translated "thousands" properly means "families" and that actually there were merely six hundred families that went out of Egypt. According to a leading economist, Colin Clark, in "The Economics of 1960" (1942), the proportion of males between the ages of 20 and 60 to the whole population can be taken as averaging 1 to 4. On this basis, and allowing for the tribe of Levi, there would be about two and a half millions of men, women and children in that long trek through the wilderness. One might say, hastily, that all of Sinai would not produce manna enough for such a multitude. The Scripture itself gives us the data necessary for a calculation. The ration for each person was to be one omer per day (Exod.16:16‑18). An omer is roughly equivalent to three pints, as far as Hebrew measures are at present understood. A little less than a million gallons or 150,000 cubic feet of manna therefore, would be required daily to satisfy the terms of the Bible account. It has been shown that the manna, or rather the insects producing it, depend upon rainy years and the presence of the tamarisk tree. It is known that in former times Sinai was thickly forested with tamarisk and acacia (the latter is the "shittim wood" of which the Tabernacle was constructed). Much of this forest lingered until the nineteenth century, but during that century there was a great burning of the trees by the Arabs for the sake of producing charcoal, which was carried into Egypt, a great trade in this being conducted resulting in Sinai becoming almost completely deforested, and transformed into the sterile barren waste that it is now. It was only in 1944 that the Egyptian Government decided to undertake the systematic afforestation of Sinai to restore its ancient productiveness. It was shown, some years ago, in a paper "Climatic changes since the Ice Age" read before the Victoria Institute, that the world in general experienced a period of intense wet weather round about the time of the Exodus and on to the ninth century B.C. Several features of the ten plagues on the Egyptians confirm the thought that the time of Moses was one of plenteous rainfall. We have evidence therefore that the two factors necessary to the production of manna, viz., trees and rainfall, were present to an unusual degree and with the assurance we have that Divine control over the powers of nature is constantly being exercised in the interests of God's Plan we may be certain that this was of design. Given the climatic conditions indicated above, the quantity of manna just mentioned could be produced, and gathered, over an area of no more than two square miles. The host of Israel, with all the tents and impedimenta (equipment) required for camping would be spread, at any one time, over an area of fifteen square miles, the size of a British city such as Coventry. It need not be thought incredible then, that such a vast host should be able to find a sufficiency of manna for their needs, gathered day by day on either side of the line of march. But the wonder of the miracle remains. Men of science may reveal to us the nature of this mystic food, showing that God laid hold of that which the wilderness already brought forth. They can bear unwitting witness to the unerring foresight of God for His people's needs and His control of natural forces when they tell us that the climatic conditions at that period were unusually favourable to the satisfaction of those needs. But they cannot explain why it is that for forty long years those myriads of busy insects worked unceasingly for six days in every week—and rested on the remaining day! For when the Israelites looked out of their tents on every Sabbath morning, there was no manna on the ground! They must needs gather on the sixth day enough for two days. That mysterious cessation of the natural course on one day in every week has a regularity which is not of Nature unaided—it is of God. Only the One who rules the universe from above could so command and restrain the labours of His creatures that they rested every sixth day so that there might be no manna on the seventh. Therein is the hand of God revealed, as it is revealed throughout the whole of this wonderful account, taking up the ordinary, insignificant things of earth, bending them to His purpose, and in that totally unexplainable fashion which men call "miraculous" using them to fulfil a vital need in the execution of His Plans. AOH
John 6:31-35 "Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it
is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Then Jesus said unto them,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but
my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he
which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. Then said they
unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread. And Jesus said unto them, I am the
bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on
me shall never thirst." Hidden Manna Revelation 2:17 (NKJV) "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it."' |
