Exodus 16:14-15
They said one to another, It is manna
The name is a question in Hebrew, asked because they did not know what it was. The answer given is not a description but a source.
Objects of the Bible
The manna
They named it after a question. Manna means what is it, and nobody ever answered.
It appears with the dew and is described carefully by people trying to say what an unfamiliar thing is like: a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground, like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it like wafers made with honey. Numbers adds that it was the colour of bdellium, that it fell with the dew at night, and that they ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar and made cakes of it. The name is the question they asked on seeing it.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The manna
- 01
- 02
Exodus 16:17-18
He that gathered much had nothing over
Whatever they gathered measured out to the same amount per person. The effort varied and the result did not.
- 03
Exodus 16:19-21
It bred worms, and stank
Storing it was the one thing forbidden, and some tried. It also melted when the sun waxed hot, so it could not be hoarded either way.
- 04
Exodus 16:22-26
Tomorrow is the rest of the holy sabbath
The sixth day gives double and the seventh gives none, and the leftovers do not spoil. The rhythm is taught by bread before it is taught by law.
- 05
Joshua 5:12
The manna ceased on the morrow
It stops the day after they eat of the old corn of the land. Forty years of it end without ceremony because it is no longer needed.
Why it matters
The arrangement around it is stranger than the substance. An omer for every man, and when they measured it he that gathered much had nothing over and he that gathered little had no lack. It bred worms if kept overnight, except on the sixth day, when a double portion kept perfectly, which turned the sabbath into a fact about food before it was a rule about work. They ate it forty years. And Jesus, arguing with a crowd that wants another sign like it, says your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead, and then says what the true bread is.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
