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 m against the LORD. 9 ¶ And Moses spake unto Aaron, Say unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, n Come near m See 1 Sam. 8. 7. Luke 10, 16. Rom. 13. n Numb. 16. 16, 2. Lord heareth, &c. These words confirm the idea suggested above, that the language of rebuke and threatening is intermingled with that of favor. Otherwise how can we understand it as a reason for supplying their wants, that he had heard their murmurings? Such a reason demanded a punishment rather than a favor; and we can have no doubt that while God intended to bestow upon them, in his own way, the requisite means of subsistence, he intended at the same time to make such a display of himself as would chasten, humble, and shame his people in view of their sinful deportment.- T Your murmurings that if thou wouldst believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?' i. e. the glorious work of God. So also Num. 14. 21, 22, 'glory' is used in a sense equivalent to striking achievements of divine power; 'But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles (or, even my miracles), &c., shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers.' The first is doubtless the most primary and legitimate sense, as appears from v. 10; and we cannot question, from the ordinary import of the glowing or burning pillar of cloud, that the spectacle now predicted was in-are not against us. Not so much against tended to intimate to them the fact of us as against the Lord. So 1 Sam. 8. 7, the divine displeasure, notwithstanding 'For they have not rejected thee, but the purpose graciously to supply their they have rejected me;' i. e. not so wants. Thus the Jewish commentator much thee as me. John, 12, 44, 'He Abrabanel; 'Their seeing the glory of that believeth on me, believeth not on the Lord is not to be understood of the me, but on him that sent me ;' i. e. not bread, or the flesh he sent them, but of so much on me. Chal. 'Your murmur. the fire which appeared to all the people ings are not against us, but against the to reprove them for their murmurings.' Word of the Lord.' 8. The Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat. As God does not always withhold in displeasure, so he does not always grant in love. A promise of bread in the morning is precious information, but the addition of flesh to the full in the evening, and that very evening, wears rather the appearance of a threatening. When our desires exceed the bounds of wisdom they amount to lusts, and if God deigns to gratify our lusts it is very far from being a token for good. On the contrary, it is suspicious; it is ominous of a purpose to chastise us through the natural results of our own folly. For that the VOL. I 18 9. Come near before the Lord. That is, before the cloud in which the Lord's glorious presence was manifested, and which for the present constituted the Shekinah or habitation of the divine Majesty. The symbols of God's presence are repeatedly in the Scriptures called by his name. Thus Uzzah is said, 1 Chron. 13. 10, to have died 'before God ;' whereas in 2 Sam. 6. 7, it is said, 'He died by the ark of God.' So the commandment, Ex. 23. 17, 'Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord God,' is to be understood of appearing before the tabernacle or temple, 'the place which the Lord did choose to put 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 p I have heard the murmurings o ver. 7. ch. 13. 21. Nuub. 16. 19. 1 Kings 8. 10, 11. P ver. 8. his name there.' Deut. 12. 5, 6. Before this awful symbol they were now cited to appear, as before a tribunal. 10. They looked toward the wilderness. In the direction in which they were journeying, whither the cloud had probably moved in advance of the congregation. The glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. Chal. 'The Glory of the Lord was revealed.' Arab. 'And lo, the Light of the Lord in the cloud.' That is, the Shekinah appeared in a new aspect. An unwonted glowing fiery brightness appeared in the guiding pil. lar, which on ordinary occasions pre-sented to the eye merely an opaque towering mass of cloud, in which the divine Majesty was supposed to dwell, and did dwell. Its preternatural resplendent appearance was obviously a token of the displeasure of God towards his people. See Remarks above, p. 164 -168. 11, 12. The Lord spake unto Moses, &c. These two verses are undoubtedly designed to acquaint us with the source and authority of the annunciation which Moses gave v. 6, 7, and therefore the verb 'spake' should be rendered in the pluperfect tense, 'had spoken.' This makes the narrative clear, and supersedes the necessity for which some commentators contend, of transposing these verses so as to bring them in immediately after v. 3. T At even. Heb. 7 bën ha-arbayim, between of the children of Israel; speak unto them, saying, a 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. 13 And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. q ver. 6. r ver. 7. s Numb. 11. 31. Ps. 78. 27, 28. & 105. 40. t Numb. 11. 9. the two evenings. Gг. Tо проs έσжερаν, towards evening; i. e. in the afternoon. See Note on Ex. 12. 6. 13. At even the quails came up. Heb. on taal hasselav, the quail (collect. sing.) came up. The 'quail' is a bird of the gallinaceous kind, somewhat resembling the partridge. Has selquist, speaking of the larger species of quail, says, 'It is of the size of the turtle-dove. I have met with it in the wilderness of Palestine near the shores of the Dead Sea and the Jordan, between Jordan and Jericho, and in the deserts of Arabia Petræa. If the food of the Israelites was a bird, this is certainly it; being so common in the places through which they passed.' Some commentators have supposed that the original word 3 salav, denoted a species of locust, which is well known to have constituted anciently an article of food among the inhabitants of that region, and which is in fact eaten by the Arabs of the present day. But to this it is an insuperable objection, that the Psalmist, in describing this particular food of the Israelites, says, Ps. 78. 27, 'He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea.' They came up' from the Arabian Gulf, across which they fly in the spring in great numbers, and are often so fatigued after their passage, and fly so low, as to become an easy prey wherever they alight. Wisd. 19. 12, 'For quails came 6 15 And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat. x John 6. 31, 49, 58. 1 Cor. 10. 3. dew in order that a due degree of moisture might be imparted to it, and that it might be gathered clean and free from the dust or sand of the desert. It was up unto them from the sea for their contentment.' Another miraculous supply of quails was granted to the Israelites about a year after this, of which we have a detailed account, Num. 11. 31-made to fall upon the face of the wil35. David probably alludes to both when he says, Ps. 105. 40, 'The people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven (the manna).'- The dew lay. Heb.bonn dak mehuspos, from the root derness,' or without the precincts of the camp, probably because the camp was not so clean a place for the purpose. T A small round thing. דק .Heb dakak, signifying to beat small or דקק hayethah shikbath היתה שכבת הטל hattal, there was a laying (or layer) of dew. Chal. "There was a descent of dew.' Arab. 'There was a spreading of dew.' 14. And when the dew that lay was gone up, &c. Heb. Son na 3 vattaal shikbath hattal, and the layer of dew came up ; i. e. appeared on the surface of the earth, without any special reference to its originating in the air, and much less without intending to convey the idea of its evaporation into the atmosphere, as our translation has erroneously rendered it. The phrase in the original is precisely the same with that applied to the quails, v. 13, 3 taal hasselav, the quail came up; i. e. made its appearance. There is no good reason for rendering the particle and by 'when' as is done in our version. The true meaning of the clause must be determined by what is more explicitly affirmed of the phenomenon, Num. 11. 9, 'And when the dew fell npon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it ;' from which it does not appear that the ordinary dew first vanished away before the manna was seen. On the contrary, the substance resembling the hoar-frost lay upon the dew. It was perhaps imbedded thus in the morning me fine, to comminute, to triturate; and` hence as an adjective small, minute, atom-like. It would seem to have been a fine powdered substance, like flour,' and perhaps a pretty large mixture of dew was necessary to give it sufficient coherence to enable them to gather it. As to the connected word husphos, though rendered round, it is of extremely uncertain sense, occurring no where else but here, and derived from an unknown root. From a comparison of the cognate dialects Castell elicits the sense of beat, pounded, pulverised; Gesenius that of decorticatum or something pealed off; i. e. scaly, flaky; and Michaelis that of snow-like, which latter Rosenmuller very confidently adopts as the true sense, particularly as it is immediately after compared to the hoarfrost. But it is still a field of conjecture. 15. They said one to another, It is manna; for they wist not what it was. Heb. 7 man-hu. The rendering in our translation is manifestly incorrect and contradictory, and should be exchanged for that in the margin, 'What is this?' For how could the Israelites be ignorant what it was, if they at once declared it to be manna? Josephus says expressly that 'man' is a particle of interrogation, and so the Septuagint understands it-TI EσTI TOUTO, what is this? It is but proper to remark here, however, that another, and perhaps on the whole a better derivation of the term itself is given by most of the Jewish and many Christian critics. This is to trace its etymology to manah, to prepare, appoint, determine, apportion, 'what,' simply because that, upon its first appearance, they said, 'what is it?' Although it is true that they did not distinctly know what it was when it appeared, and they had no particular name by which to express it, yet they had been assured by Moses, verse 12, that they should be satisfied with food, and they accordingly conjectured that what they saw was the portion intend whence by apocope of the last lettered for them from heaven, and applied to it the proper term for expressing that idea.-It can scarcely be necessary to inform the reader that attempts have been made to identify this manna with the natural juices or gums of certain trees or shrubs to which the name has been given. The strongest claim to identity applies to the substance called by the Arabs mann, of which the fullest account is given by Burckhardt (Tour in the Peninsula of Mount Sinai). Speak man, the same as manah, a part, a portion, a prepared allowance. Thus we find the latter employed, 1 Sam. 1. 4. 5, 'And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions (manoth). But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion (manah) for he loved Hannah; but the Lord had shut up her womb.' 1 Sam. 9. 23, 'And Samuel said unto the cook, Bring the portion (ma-ing of the Wady el Sheikh, to the north nah) which I gave thee, of which I said of Mount Serbal, he says, 'It is the only unto thee, Set it by thee.' Ps. 11. 6, valley in the peninsula of Sinai where This shall be the portion ( me- this tree grows, at present, in any great nath) of their cup.' That an abbrevia- quantity; though small bushes of it are tion of the word from manah to here and there met with in other parts. man should occur under the circum. It is from the tarfa that the manna is stances is very natural, as the next word obtained. This substance is called by begins withh, the very letter elided, the Bedouins mann, and accurately reand similar contractions in regard to sembles the description of manna given the verb manah are very common. in the Scriptures. In the month of June, Thus Ps. 61. 7, 'O prepare (2 man) it drops from the thorns of the tamarisk mercy and truth for him.' Jonah, 1. 17, upon the fallen twigs, leaves, and thorns 'Now the Lord had prepared (2 ye- which always cover the ground beneath man) a great fish.' Dan. 1. 5, 'And the that tree in the natural state; the manna king appointed (yeman) them a is collected before sunrise, when it is daily provision, &c.' As, therefore, coagulated; but it dissolves as soon as both the form and the signification favor the sun shines upon it. The Arabs clean this etymology, there is, we conceive, away the leaves, dirt, etc., which adlittle hazard in saying with the most here to it, boil it, strain it through a learned of the Rabbins, that man sig- coarse piece of cloth, and put it in nifies the food appointed, prepared for, leathern skins: in this way they preand doled out to the children of Israel serve it till the following year, and use as their portion. Such a name was ap- it as they do honey, to pour over unpropriate to this miraculous food, while leavened bread, or to dip their bread there is something undignified, to say into. I could not learn that they ever the least, in the idea that this super- made it into cakes or loaves. The mannatural aliment should always be called na is found only in years when copious became offensive and bred worms if kept above one day, while that which was gathered on the sixth day kept sweet for two days; that the people had never seen it before, which could not possibly be the case with either wild-honey or gum-arabic; that it was a substance which admitted of being ground in a handmill or pounded in a mortar, of being made into cakes and baked, and that it tasted like wafers made with honey; lastly, that it continued falling for the forty years that the Israelites abode in the wilderness, but ceased on their arriving at the borders of Canaan. To perpetuate the remembrance of the miracle, a pot of the manna was to be laid up by the side of the ark, which clearly indicates the extraordinary nature of the production. In no one respect does it correspond to the modern manna. The latter does not fall from heaven, it is not deposited with the dew, but exudes from the trees when rains have fallen; sometimes it is not produced at all. I saw none of it among the Arabs, but I obtained a small piece of the last year's produce, in the convent (of Mount Sinai) where, having been kept in the cool shade and moderate temperature of that place, it had become quite solid, and formed a small cake; it became soft when kept some time in the hand; if placed in the sun for five minutes, it dissolved; but when restored to a cool place, it became solid again in a quarter of an hour. In the season at which the Arabs gather it, it never acquires that state of hardness which will allow of its being pounded, as the Israelites are said to have done, in Num. 11. 8. Its color is a dirty yellow, and the piece which I saw was still mixed with bits of tamarisk leaves; its taste is agreeable, somewhat aromatic, and as sweet as honey. If eaten in any considerable quantity, it is said to be slightly purgative. The quantity of manna collected at present, even in sea-punctured, and is to be found only in sons when the most copious rains fall, is trifling, perhaps not amounting to more than five or six hundred pounds. It is entirely consumed among the Bedouins, who consider it the greatest dainty which their country affords. The harvest is usually in June, and lasts for about six weeks.'-'The notion, however, that any species of vegetable gum is the manna of the Scriptures, appears so totally irreconcilable with the Mosaic narrative, that, notwithstanding the learned names which may be cited in support of the conjecture, it cannot be safely admitted as any explanation of the miracle. It is expressly said, that the manna was rained from heaven; that when the dew appeared, it also appeared lying on the surface of the ground, 'a small, round thing, as small as the hoar-frost,' 'like coriander seed, and its color like a pearl;' that it fell but six days in the week, and that a double quantity fell on the sixth day; that what was gathered on the first five days the particular spots where those trees abound; it could not, therefore, have supplied the Israelites with food in the more arid parts of the desert, where they most required it. The gums, moreover, flow only for about a month in the year; they neither admit of being ground, pounded, or baked; they do not breed worms; and they are not peculiar to the Arabian wilderness. Others have supposed the manna to have been a fat and thick honey-dew, and that this was the wild-honey which John the Baptist lived upon-a supposition worthy of being ranked with the monkish legend of St. John's bread, or the locust-tree, and equally showing an entire ignorance of the nature of the country. It requires the Israelites to have been constantly in the neighborhood of trees, in the midst of a wilderness often bare of all vege. tation. Whatever the manna was, it was clearly a substitute for bread, and it is expressly called meat, or food. The abundant supply, the periodical suspen. |