A New Kind of Food

CAN you tell what the people are picking up off the ground? It is like frost. It is white, and it is thin and flaky. But it’s not frost; it’s something to eat.

It has been only about a month since the Israelites left Egypt. They are in the wilderness. Little food grows here, and so the people complain, saying: ‘We wish that Jehovah had killed us in Egypt. At least there we had all the food that we wanted.’

So Jehovah says: ‘I am going to cause food to rain down from the sky.’ And this is what Jehovah does. The next morning when the Israelites see this white stuff that has fallen, they ask one another: ‘What is it?’

Moses says: ‘This is the food that Jehovah has given you to eat.’ The people call it MANNA. It tastes like thin cakes made with honey.

‘You are to pick up as much as each person can eat,’ Moses tells the people. So each morning this is what they do. Then, when the sun gets hot, the manna left on the ground melts.

Moses also says: ‘No one is to save any of the manna over to the next day.’ But some of the people don’t listen. Do you know what happens? The next morning the manna that they have saved is full of worms, and it begins to stink!

There is one day of the week, however, that Jehovah tells the people to gather twice as much manna. This is the sixth day. And Jehovah says to save some of it over to the next day, because he will not cause any to fall on the seventh day. When they save the manna over to the seventh day, it doesn’t get full of worms and it doesn’t stink! This is another miracle!

All the years that the Israelites are in the wilderness Jehovah feeds them with manna.