Exodus 16:1-36

16:1-3 | The Wilderness of Sin may have been in the southwestern region of the Sinai Peninsula, along the shore of the Red Sea. Gone from Egypt for only a month, the whole congregation accused Moses and Aaron of deliberately leading them into the wilderness to kill them.

16:4-5 | For them to survive without food from any natural source required the Lord to do what only He could do: for five days each week, He delivered daily portions of bread from heaven for each individual; on the sixth day, there was a double provision; and on the seventh, there was none at all. What anyone needs to get through the “wilderness” is not available except from God Himself.

16:7-8 | Moses showed that the people’s complaints, leveled at their human leaders, were actually against the LORD. This is true anytime a child of God grumbles.

16:9-10 | The people had experienced the work of the Lord and had been under the word of the Lord; now they were to experience the wonder of the Lord. The revelation of His glory in the cloud was designed to instill confidence and to compel faithfulness.

16:13-16 | The meal of quail was a miracle (Num. 11:31-35), but the small round substance was the greater surprise. The word manna comes from the question the Hebrew people asked that first morning: What is it? (Heb., man hu). Manna would be their food for the next 40 years, until the new generation entered the Promised Land (Josh. 5:11-12). The amount of food the Lord provided was staggering: one day’s “delivery” for more than 2 million people for nearly 40 years!

16:22-26 | Not only did the Lord miraculously provide manna for the people, but He also miraculously preserved manna from the sixth day for use on the Sabbath (called “the seventh day” in Gen. 2:1-3) – the first mention of the term in Scripture. In this, Israel learned to observe this day of rest even before the Ten Commandments were issued (20:8-11).

16:31-35 | Although the manna tasted sweet on their tongues (like wafers made with honey), its true sweetness was in its sufficiency to sustain the people from the land of slavery to the Land of Promise. God’s provisions are sweet for those who are willing to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8).