The Israelites enjoyed their rest at Elim; but after some days the cloud in which God’s presence dwelt lifted and began too move slowly away. By this sign the people understood that God wished to lead them farther on their journey. So they took down their tents and prepared too start forward again.
Now they entered a great desert country which lay between Elim and the mountain where God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. This country was called the Wilderness of Sin.
Like fretful children, the Israelites began to find fault with Moses and Aaron. First one thing, then another, displeased them. They could find so little food to eat in the great wilderness, and they grew hungry. Then they forgot how much they had suffered in Egypt. They forgot how many times God had helped them out of trouble. They thought only of their hunger, and of their unhappy state. They said, “We wish we had never left Egypt, for there we always had plenty to eat. We would rather have died there than die in this dreary country.”
Moses heard the people complain and he was grieved. God, too, heard them. He spoke to Moses and said, “The people are sinning against me when they find fault with you because you led them out of Egypt. I shall not let them die of hunger, but I have brought them to this place so that they may know that I am the giver of all their blessings. In the evening I shall send meat to them, and in the morning I shall give them bread from heaven.”
Then Moses called the people together to hear the words of the Lord. While Aaron spoke to them they looked toward the wilderness and saw in the cloud a glorious light. They knew God had heard their complaints.
In the evening a great many quails flew into the camp, and the people killed them for meat. The next morning a heavy dew lay on the ground. When the sun beamed down warm and bright the dew disappeared, and left the ground covered with something which looked white, like frost. “What is this?” the people asked each other when they looked out of their tents and saw the strange food lying on the ground. In their language “what is this?” are the words “man hu,” and so the people said to each other, “Man hu? man hu?” Afterwards the food was called manna.
Moses told the people that God had sent this food to be their bread. “Go and gather it,” said he, “and bring as much as you will need for today. Do not keep any in your vessels for tomorrow, because God will send a fresh supply. Each morning he will cause this bread to fall, except on the morning of the seventh day. On the sixth day you must gather twice as much as’ usual, and what is left after you have eaten of that gathering you may keep for the seventh day. It will not spoil on the seventh day, because God wishes you to keep that day as a holy Sabbath and do no work.”
At Moses’ bidding the people rushed out with vessels and gathered the manna from the ground. They cooked it, and the taste of this food pleased them.
Now, some of the people were not careful to obey Moses. When they saw they had prepared more manna than was needful for one day they kept it until the next morning. But the bread was no longer fit to eat, and they had to go out again to gather a fresh supply. And some failed to gather twice as much as usual on the sixth morning. But when they went out with their vessels on the Sabbath morning to pick up the wonderful bread they could find none. God was not pleased because they had disobeyed. And they had nothing to eat on that Sabbath.
From this time God sent manna to the Israelites every morning, except on the Sabbath, until they came to the land of Canaan.