'Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain
bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out
and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove
them, whether they will walk in My law, or no. 5. And
it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall
prepare that which they bring in; and it shall be twice
as much as they gather daily. 6. And Moses and Aaron said
unto all the children of Israel, At even, then ye shall
know that the Lord hath brought you out from the land of
Egypt: 7. And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory
of the Lord; for that He heareth your murmurings against
the Lord: and what are we, that ye murmur against us?
8. And Moses said, This shall be, when the Lord shall give
you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread
to the full; for that the Lord heareth your murmurings
which ye murmur against Him: and what are we? your murmurings
are not against us, but against the Lord, 9. And Moses
spake unto Aaron, Say unto all the congregation of the
children of Israel, Come near before the Lord: for He
hath heard your murmurings. 10. And it came to pass, as
Aaron spake unto the whole congregation of the children
of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and,
behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
11. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 12. 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; and ye shall
know that I am the Lord your God.'--EXODUS xvi. 4-12.
Unbelief has a short memory. The Red Sea is forgotten in a month. The
Israelites could strike their timbrels and sing their lyric of praise,
but they could not believe that to-day's hunger could be satisfied.
Discontent has a slippery memory. They wish to get back to the
flesh-pots, of which the savour is in their nostrils, and they have
forgotten the bitter sauce of affliction. When they were in Egypt, they
shrieked about their oppression, and were ready to give up anything for
liberty; when they have got it, they are ready to put their necks in
the yoke again, if only they can have their stomachs filled. Men do not
know how happy they are till they cease to be so. Our present miseries
and our past blessings are the themes on which unbelief harps. Let him
that is without similar sin cast the first stone at these grumbling
Israelites. Without following closely the text of the narrative, we may
throw together the lessons of the manna.
I. Observe God's purpose in the gift, as distinctly expressed in the
promise of it.
'That I may prove them, whether they will walk in My law or no.' How
did the manna become a test of this? By means of the law prescribed for
gathering it. There was to be a given quantity daily, and twice as much
on the sixth day. If a man trusted God for to-morrow, he would be
content to stop collecting when he had filled his omer, tempting as the
easily gathered abundance would be. Greed and unbelief would masquerade
then as now, under the guise of prudent foresight. The old Egyptian
parallels to 'make hay while the sun shines,' and suchlike wise sayings
of the philosophy of distrust, would be solemnly spoken, and listened
to as pearls of wisdom. When experience had taught that, however much a
man gathered, he had no more than his omer full, after all,--and is not
that true yet?--then the next temptation would be to practise economy,
and have something over for to-morrow. Only he who absolutely trusted
God to provide for him would eat up his portion, and lie down at night
with a quiet heart, knowing that He who had fed him would feed. When
experience had taught that what was saved rotted, then laziness would
come in and say, 'What is the use of gathering twice as much on the
sixth day? Don't we know that it will not keep?' So the whole of the
gift was a continual training of, and therefore a continual test for,
faith. God willed to let His gifts come in this hand-to-mouth fashion,
though He could have provided at once what would have obviously lasted
them all their wilderness life, in order that they might be habituated
to cling to Him, and that their daily bread might be doubly for their
nourishment, feeding their bodies and strengthening that faith which,
to them as to us, is the condition of all blessedness. God lets our
blessings, too, trickle to us drop by drop, instead of pouring them in
a flood all at once upon us, for the same reason. He does so, not
because of any good to Him from our faith, except that the Infinite
love loves infinitely to be loved; but for our sakes, that we may taste
the peace and strength of continual dependence, and the joy of
continual receiving. He could give us the principal down; but He
prefers to pay us the interest, as we need it.
Christianity does not absolutely forbid laying up money or other
resources for future wants. But the love of accumulating, which is so
strong in many professing Christians, and the habit of amassing beyond
all reasonable future wants, is surely scarcely permitted to those who
profess to believe that incarnate wisdom forbade taking anxious care
for the morrow, and sent its disciples to lilies and birds to learn the
happy immunities of faith. We too get our daily mercies to prove us.
The letter of the law for the manna is not applicable to us who gain
our bread by God's blessing on our labour. But the spirit is, and the
members of great commercial nations have surely little need to be
reminded that still the portion put away is apt to breed worms. How
often it vanishes, or, if it lasts, tortures its owner, who has more
trouble keeping it than he had in getting it; or fatally corrupts his
own character, or ruins his children! All God's gifts are tests,
which--thanks be to Him--is the same as to say that they are means of
increasing faith, and so adding to joy.
II. The manna was further a disclosure of the depth of patient
long-suffering in God.
Very strikingly the 'murmurings' of the children of Israel are four
times referred to in this context, and on each occasion are stated as
the reason for the gift of the manna. It was God's answer to the
peevish complaints of greedy appetites. When they were summoned to come
near to the Lord, with the ominous warning that 'He hath heard your
murmurings,' no doubt many a heart began to quake; and when the Glory
flashed from the Shechinah cloud, it would burn lurid to their
trembling consciences. But the message which comes from it is sweet in
its gentleness, as it promises the manna because they have murmured,
and in order that they may know the Lord. A mother soothes her crying
infant by feeding it from her own bosom. God does not take the rod to
His whimpering children, but rather tries to win them by patience, and
to shame their unbelief by His swift and over-abundant answers to their
complaints. When He must, He punishes; but when He can, He complies.
Faith is the condition of our receiving His highest gifts; but even
unbelief touches His heart with pity, and what He can give to it, He
does, if it may be melted into trust. The farther men stray from Him,
the more tender and penetrating His recalling voice. We multiply
transgressions, He multiplies mercies.
III. The manna was a revelation in miraculous and transient form of an
eternal truth.
The God who sent it sends daily bread. The words which Christ quoted in
His wilderness hunger are the explanation of its meaning as a witness
to this truth: 'Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.' To a Christian, the divine
power is present and operative in all natural processes as really as in
those which we call miraculous. God is separable from the universe, but
the universe is not separable from God. If it were separated, it would
cease. So far as the reality of the divine operation is concerned, it
matters not whether He works in the established fashion, through
material things, or whether His will acts directly. The chain which
binds a phenomenon to the divine will may be long or short; the
intervening links may be many, or they may be abolished, and the divine
cause and the visible effect may touch without anything between. But in
either case the power is of God. Bread made out of flour grown on the
other side of the world, and fashioned by the baker, and bought by the
fruits of my industry, is as truly the gift of God as was the manna.
For once, He showed these men His hand at work, that we all might know
that it was at work, when hidden. The lesson of the 'angel's food'
eaten in the wilderness is that men are fed by the power of God's
expressed and active will,--for that is the meaning of 'the word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God,'--in whatever fashion they get
their food. The gift of it is from Him; its power to nourish is from
Him. It is as true to-day as ever it was: 'Thou openest Thine hand, and
satisfiest the desire of every living thing.' The manna ceased when the
people came near cornfields and settled homes. Miracles end when means
are possible. But the God of the miracle is the God of the means.
Commentators make much of what is supposed to be a natural substratum
for the manna, in a certain vegetable product, found in small
quantities in parts of the Arabian peninsula. No doubt, we are to
recognise in the plagues of Egypt, and in the dividing of the Red Sea,
the extraordinary action of ordinary causes; and there is no objection
in principle to doing so here. But that an exudation from the bark of a
shrub, which has no nutritive properties at all, is found only in one
or two places in Arabia, and that only at certain seasons and in
infinitesimal quantity, seems a singularly thin 'substratum' on which
to build up the feeding of two millions of people, more or less
exclusively and continuously for forty years, by means of a substance
which has nothing to do with tamarisk-trees, and is like the natural
product in nothing but sweetness and name. Whether we admit connection
between the two, or not, the miraculous character of the manna of the
Israelites is unaffected. It was miraculous in its origin--'rained from
heaven,' in its quantity, in its observance of times and seasons, in
its putrefaction and preservation,--as rotting when kept for greed, and
remaining sweet when preserved for the Sabbath. It came straight from
the creative will of God, and whether its name means 'What is it?' or
'It is a gift,' the designation is equally true and appropriate,
pointing, in the one case, to the mystery of its nature; in the other,
to the love of the Giver, and in both referring it directly to the hand
of God.