Exodus 16:13-15

"And it came to pass at even, that the quails came up and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about every camp. And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness a small round thing, small as the hoar-frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, What is it? for they knew not what it was. And Moses said unto them, It is the bread which Jehovah hath given you to eat."

These verses record the coming of the manna. We shall pass over all of the so-called natural explanations of this, such as the resinous gum of the tamarisk trees, or the honey-like secretions of insects, and the substance called "commercial manna" traded in by Arabians to this day. This was an unqualified miracle of Almighty God that bears no resemblance, except superficially, to anything known on earth either before or since those times. This manna simply could not have been merely a natural substance:

The amount of it (for 2,000,000 people) means that it was no ordinary substance.

It appeared upon God's promise through Moses.

It continued for a full forty years.

It disappeared when they entered Canaan.

It did not appear on the sabbaths.

It produced twice as much on the sixth days.

It bred worms and became foul when certain of God's rules were violated.

It did not spoil on sabbath days.

It could be boiled, or baked (Exodus 16:23), neither of which was true of natural manna.

The Jews (presumably Moses also) did not recognize it as anything natural.

"What is it ...?" It is generally accepted by most of the writers whom we have consulted that here lies the source of the name "manna"; but Rawlinson translated the Hebrew word here as meaning, "It is a gift."[14] Also, a Jewish writer has this very interesting observation: "An alternative reading of this is, "Who is he?"[15] In view of Jesus' identification of himself as the "Bread from Heaven," there must be some validity in the alternative reading. Nevertheless, we shall use the word in its ordinarily accepted sense. Fields pointed out that the usual Hebrew word for "What" is [~mah], not [~man], as here, but that the form [~man] is found in the Tel El-Amarna letters,[16] which are dated by the Encyclopedia Britannica as prior to 1375 B.C.[17] Thus, we have another proof that dates Exodus, not in the times of a later priesthood who would not have known this word, but in the times of Moses. Payne also noted that the word used here is "paralleled in Canaanite texts of the second millennium B.C."[18]