Exodus 16:15

15. It is manna: for they wist not what it was More literally, They said, each to his brother, This is man, (is it not?) For they knew not what it (was) . They called it man, because it so exactly resembled the tamarisk or tarpi man with which they were familiar . They are here represented as talking to each other in a conversational, inquiring way, and the author adds, they knew not what it was; that is, they knew not what other name to give it . They used the Egyptian word for the tamarisk manna . Brugsch, in his Hieroglyphic Dictionary, says, “ Mannu, identical with the Hebrew man, Arabic mann . ” The tamarisk manna is found represented at the Egyptian city of Apollinopolis, presented to a deity in a basket of oblations. The resemblance, however, was only superficial, (see Introduction, 2,) for the manna of Israel was a farinaceous substance that could be made into bread, while the tamarisk manna is wholly saccharine. The Hebrew will not bear the marginal translation, “What is this?” (See Kurtz and Knobel; but Keil and Ewald make מן early Shemitic for מה . ) This is the bread which the Lord hath given you The dew was made the natural basis or vehicle of this miracle, as the water was the vehicle of the miracle of Cana, and the five loaves of that of Bethesda . The manna was deposited from the dew according to laws unknown, and probably undiscoverable, by us, yet to the Author of Nature the process was as regular and as orderly as that by which the grain is formed in the ear . We know of only one series of natural processes, one chain of secondary causes, by which the grain can be gathered up from its manifold elements, in earth, and water, and air; but God knows of many others, which are hidden from our sense and reason . To assume that the way which we know is the only way, and to call all other ways unnatural and absurd, is to make our ignorance the measure of God. It is true that we can conceive of no other way, but our power of conception is not the gauge of the universe. The water which, as liquid and vapour circulates through the veins of nature, gathers up the elements, and bears them along the sap vessels to form the farinaceous atom in the seed by processes which we can trace; but the same water could gather up the same elements and deposit this substance in the seed or on the ground by processes which we cannot trace, known only to God. This is a miracle. Of course this will not be admitted by those who do not look through nature, or within nature, and see God to be the only real cause.