Exodus 16

Exodus 16  •  5 min. read  •  grade level: 11
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But there is another lesson also. Whatever may be the refreshment by the way, the Lord sets forth in a full and distinct manner the need of absolute dependance on Christ in another form for support all the wilderness through. Here comes in that most remarkable type of Christ personally given as the bread of life for the people of God to feed on. This is in Exodus 16.1
It has been well remarked that it is as connected with this we have the Sabbath introduced, type of the rest of God. This is alone marked out and secured for us by Him who came down from heaven. Christ Himself is the manna of the people of God. Elsewhere we see Christ, not humbled, but heavenly and in heaven the food for the people viewed as in heavenly places. But it is well to note at the end of the chapter the omer of manna laid up before Jehovah for the generations of Israel, which Aaron laid up before the Testimony. It is Christ the hidden manna. Christ in His humiliation never to be forgotten by our hearts.
First it is not the fact on the ground of rationalistic theory that one is a whit more Elohistic than the other: Jehovah is the term used in Exods 16 as certainly and exclusively as in Numbers 11. Next the difference of description is not only not inconsistent, but most natural in the circumstances respectively. When first given, its appearance to the eye, and its novelty suggesting its name, are dwelt on; later not only is it more minutely compared, but the methods of using it are given, in connection with the lusting after the old food of Egypt. But both accounts concur in representing it as “air-manna,” not as the exudation from a tree, which is medicine, not food.
But as to the second point, it is plain that not the writer but the rationalist is guilty of confusion, and loses the profit of the two accounts, which are alike circumstantially and morally distinct. Not only are they represented as happening more than twelve months apart, but the truth conveyed depends on the deepest possible difference.
In Exodus 16 the people murmured before the law was given, and God gave them freely quails in the evening as well as manna in the morning. Guilty they were, but He acts only in grace until Exodus 19-20. Then, when the people who had voluntarily accepted legal conditions murmured once more for flesh, tiring of the manna, they were dealt with according to the law under which they stood, and judgment fell on them from God, instead of the grace they had originally known.
If we had not the two facts, resembling each other on the surface but contrasted in principle, neither the believer could have had so profound a lesson, nor the rationalist have so fully displayed to his shame his ignorance of God. Psalm 105:40; 106:14- 15, might be profitably compared by friends or enemies of the Bible. The one will find the amplest confirmation of Exodus 16 and Numbers 11 as distinct accounts illustrating sovereign grace and creature-responsibility; the other can hardly avoid seeing a further and independent proof of his ruinous unbelief. The psalmist sets forth at full length the distinction which pseudo-criticism would destroy; and this too in such a way as to prove that they are but cases out of many facts which fall under the principles already indicated.)
 
1. It is alleged that there is “a double description of the manna in Exodus 16:11, and so forth, and Numbers 11:7-9. In the former it is said that it fell from the air, was white like coriander seed, and melted if the sun shone upon it; in the latter, that it could be pound (sic) in mills, or beaten in mortars, or baken in pans, and prepared in cakes. Thus two (?) writers appear. Had one and the same author described this extraordinary food of the Israelites, he would not have presented such varying accounts. Kalisch (Commentary on Exodus, p. 213 et seq) can only explain the fact by assuming that two sorts of manna are meant; what he calls air-manna and tree-manna. He omits to notice the true cause of diversity in the description – difference of authorship. The tamarix tnanifera or tarafa shrub yields the substance in question by the puncture of an insect, the coccus maniparus. Exodus 16:9-26 is Elohistic; Numbers 11 is Jehovistic. They are shadows, and not the very image of the thing. In none of these types can one find the full truth of Christ and of His work. They are only a faint and partial adumbration of the infinite reality, and could not possibly be more. Hence they have the imperfection of a shadow. In fact we could not have the full image until Christ appeared and died on the cross and went to heaven. As Christ is the true and perfect image of God, so is He the expression of all that is good and holy in man. Where will one find what man should be but in Christ? Where the faultless picture of a servant but in Him? And so one might go through every quality and every office, and find them only in perfection in our Lord Jesus. There indeed is the truth. The legal ordinances and institutes were but shadows; still they were types distinctly constituted; and we should learn by them all, after the people had become tired of the manna. Is it not probable then that the writer in Exodus puts two different facts together which were separate in time; namely, the sending of quails and manna? It is no explanation to assert that there is nothing improbable in supposing that the Israelites twice murmured for flesh, and that God twice sent them quails. The manna of Numbers 11 renders this supposition extremely improbable. Part of Exodus 16 is Elohistic; Numbers 11 is Jehovistic.”