Exodus 16:1-26.
THEY had gone through one little “wilderness” (verse 22 in the fifteenth chapter), or rather I should. say, they had gone across a little corner of a big wild waste where nobody lived, and now the children of Israel were led across another wilderness, for there are very few places in the peninsula of Sinai where anyone lives, or anything grows. Great stretches of shifting sand have to be crossed from one oasis (like Elim) to another.
Their course was now away from the sea altogether, for before this, up to the end of the fifteenth chapter, the people had been traveling near to the Red Sea ever since they crossed it with the Egyptian army behind them. A month had been passed on the journey. That is not a very long time, but it seems to have been long enough for nearly everyone that came out of Egypt to forget what a hard time they had had; how cruelly they had all been treated there. Perhaps they really had not forgotten those dreadful days and nights when they just about wished that they had never been born, but Satan surely put into their hearts what they said to Moses and Aaron, as we read in the third verse.
They said that they would rather have died, like some of the people did in Egypt, under God’s punishment in the land of their cruel slavery, than to be brought into the country of sand and rocks, to die of starvation. There, where they had been, the people said, they “sat by the flesh pots,” and “did eat bread to the full;” here, it was to die with hunger. We read on, to see what God did, or said, to people so ungrateful, so slow to trust Him, and what do we find?
“Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you ... .every day.”
How kind, how unwilling to be angry He was, He is! They had forgotten that the Lord had brought them, out from the land of Egypt, but He had not forgotten, and would not forget, them. He knew all about their clothes, their shoes, food and drink, everything indeed, He would take care to see that they had all the way, though God would let them wait a little now and then, test them, as we sometimes say, before giving them what they needed.
Aaron, at Moses’ word, called the people to come near, telling them that God had heard their murmurings, and as they looked toward the wilderness, the brightness of God’s presence was seen in the cloud that went before them on their journeys. To Moses God said, “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel; speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread.” How was this to be? The thirteenth verse tells; in the evening a great flock of the birds called quails came by, flying low, as travelers tell us they frequently do in that region, so that they would be easily caught; and in the morning there was another surprise.
When the dew was gone with the heat of the rising sun, there lay on the ground thousands of small round white things, having a taste like honey. The people called them manna, and Moses told them it was the bread God had promised. They gathered enough for their families each morning, and it had to be eaten the same day. But on the sixth day they gathered enough for two days, and then the next day’s portion did not go bad, nor was there any manna found on the seventh day.
ML 02/12/1922