The manna signifies the Son of God become incarnate to give life to our souls. He, entering in humiliation into all our circumstances, is the provision for the daily walk through the wilderness. We find the manna spoken of in connection with Jesus as the living bread sent down from heaven. “This is the true bread which cometh down from heaven” (John 6). But what then is the hidden manna? The manna for Israel was spread around the camp, and they were to gather it daily for their food. And so likewise is Christ to be the daily provision of the soul while in this wilderness world, but this is not the hidden manna. There was to be a golden pot of manna laid up before God, and when the Israelites had entered into the land, they were to have the memorial of what they had enjoyed in the wilderness. This hidden manna is the remembrance of a suffering Christ down here — the memory of what Christ has been in the wilderness, as a man, a humbled, suffering man, and one who is God’s eternal delight in heaven. In our eternal state, those who have overcome, those who have been faithful in separation with Christ from the world, will have the everlasting enjoyment of fellowship with God in His delight in a once-humbled Christ — the same kind of delight, although in a different measure.
J. N. Darby, adapted