Exodus 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).