Violation of the Sabbath
Notwithstanding Moses’ caution to them, some of the people
did go out on the Sabbath day to gather in and they found none. Seeing the
disobedience of the people, God asked Moses, “How long will you continue to
refuse to keep my commandments and my laws?
I have given you the Sabbath; on the sixth day, I gave you twice the
bread you need and told you that there was to be no gathering on the seventh
day. And I told you that no one was to go out on the seventh day.”
So the
people went out in disobedience to God’s commandment that first Sabbath, and
Moses reiterated God’s command; so that the people got the message and went out
on the Sabbath day no more, as among other things, they realized that it was
futile to do so.
Thereafter,
they marked the day and named the name of the place Manna. And at Moses’ command, Aaron filled an omer
to be kept by the people in perpetuity as a reminder of how they were fed in
the wilderness.
And the
children of Israel ate manna
for forty years from then until they came into the borders of the land of Canaan
One may
tend to think that to eat the same thing day after day for forty years was no
joy; but this view would ignore the fact that bread is one kind of food that
most people eat every day. In fact many
people would admit that no meal for them is complete without some bread.
On the
other hand, manna was not a definitive meal with a definitive taste. It has been suggested that manna was a sort
of food, so that it catered not only to individual taste but individual yen. As
a matter of fact the word manna comes from two Hebrew words that translate
“what is it?” This indicates that even
after eating it for forty years, those who ate it would defer over a definition
of what it tasted like, or even what it was. It has been described as bread of
heaven, angel food, light bread, the corn of heaven; and so indeed one may ask,
“What is it?” More
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