Exodus 16:31-36 New English Translation
31 The house of Israel[a] called its name “manna.”[b] It was like coriander seed and was white, and it tasted[c] like wafers with honey.
32 Moses said, “This is what[d] the Lord has commanded: ‘Fill an omer with it to be kept[e] for generations to come,[f] so that they may see[g] the food I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out from the land of Egypt.’” 33 Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put in it an omer full of manna, and place it before the Lord to be kept for generations to come.” 34 Just as the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the ark of the testimony[h] for safekeeping.[i]
35 Now the Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was inhabited; they ate manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan. 36 (Now an omer is one-tenth of an ephah.)[j]
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- Exodus 16:31 sn The name “house of Israel” is unusual in this context.
- Exodus 16:31 tn Hebrew מָן (man).
- Exodus 16:31 tn Heb “like seed of coriander, white, its taste was.”
- Exodus 16:32 tn Heb “This is the thing that.”
- Exodus 16:32 tn Heb “for keeping.”
- Exodus 16:32 tn Heb “according to your generations” (see Exod 12:14).
- Exodus 16:32 tn In this construction after the particle expressing purpose or result, the imperfect tense has the nuance of final imperfect, equal to a subjunctive in the classical languages.
- Exodus 16:34 sn The “ark of the testimony” (Heb “the testimony”) is a reference to the Ark of the Covenant; so the pot of manna would be placed before Yahweh in the tabernacle. W. C. Kaiser says that this later instruction came from a time after the tabernacle had been built (see Exod 25:10-22; W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:405). This is not a problem since the final part of this chapter had to have been included at the end of the forty years in the desert.
- Exodus 16:34 tn Heb “for keeping.”
- Exodus 16:36 tn The words “omer” and “ephah” are transliterated Hebrew words. The omer is mentioned only in this passage. (It is different from a “homer” [cf. Ezek 45:11-14].) An ephah was a dry measure whose capacity is uncertain: “Quotations given for the ephah vary from ca. 45 to 20 liters” (C. Houtman, Exodus, 2:340-41).sn The point of this chapter, with all its instructions and reports included, is God’s miraculous provision of food for his people. This is a display of sovereign power that differs from the display of military power. Once again the story calls for faith, but here it is faith in Yahweh to provide for his people. The provision is also a test to see if they will obey the instructions of God. Deut 8 explains this. The point, then, is that God provides for the needs of his people that they may demonstrate their dependence on him by obeying him. The exposition of this passage must also correlate to John 6. God’s providing manna from heaven to meet the needs of his people takes on new significance in the application that Jesus makes of the subject to himself. There the requirement is the same—will they believe and obey? But at the end of the event John explains that they murmured about Jesus.
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