---
title: "Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible -  Exodus 16"
description: "CHAPTER 16   :-. MURMURS FOR
WANT OF BREAD. 1. they took their journey from
Elim—where they had remained several days. came unto the wilderness of
Sin—It"
image: "/images/missing.jpg"
url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/commentaries/commentary-critical-and-explanatory-on-the-whole-bible/exodus/16"
---

CHAPTER 16

. MURMURS FOR
WANT OF BREAD.

**1. they took their journey from
Elim**—where they had remained several days.
**came unto the wilderness of
Sin**—It appears from , that several stations are omitted in this historical
notice of the journey. This passage represents the Israelites as
advanced into the great plain, which, beginning near El-Murkah,
extends with a greater or less breadth to almost the extremity of the
peninsula. In its broadest part northward of Tur it is called El-Kaa,
which is probably the desert of Sin [ROBINSON].

**2. the whole congregation . . .
murmured against Moses and Aaron**—Modern travellers through the
desert of Sinai are accustomed to take as much as is sufficient for
the sustenance of men and beasts during forty days. The Israelites
having been rather more than a month on their journey, their store of
corn or other provisions was altogether or nearly exhausted; and
there being no prospect of procuring any means of subsistence in the
desert, except some wild olives and wild honey (), loud complaints were made against the leaders.

**3. Would to God we had died by the
hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt**—How unreasonable and
absurd the charge against Moses and Aaron! how ungrateful and impious
against God! After all their experience of the divine wisdom,
goodness, and power, we pause and wonder over the sacred narrative of
their hardness and unbelief. But the expression of feeling is
contagious in so vast a multitude, and there is a feeling of solitude
and despondency in the desert which numbers cannot dispel; and
besides, we must remember that they were men engrossed with the
*present*—that the Comforter was not then given—and that
they were destitute of all visible means of sustenance and cut off
from every visible comfort, with only the promises of an *unseen*
God to look to as the ground of their hope. And though we may lament
they should tempt God in the wilderness and freely admit their sin in
so doing, we can be at no loss for a reason why those who had all
their lives been accustomed to walk by *sight* should, in
circumstances of unparalleled difficulty and perplexity, find it hard
to walk by *faith.* Do not even *we* find it difficult to
walk by faith through the wilderness of this world, though in the
light of a clearer revelation, and under a nobler leader than Moses?
[FISK]. (See [1 Corinthians 10:11](../../../kjv/1-corinthians/10/11);
[1 Corinthians 10:12](../../../kjv/1-corinthians/10/12)).

**4. Then said the Lord unto
Moses**—Though the outbreak was immediately against the human
leaders, it was indirectly against God: yet mark His patience, and
how graciously He promised to redress the grievance.
**I will rain bread from
heaven**—Israel, a type of the Church which is from above, and
being under the conduct, government, and laws of heaven, received
their food from heaven also ().
**that I may prove them,
whether they will walk in my law, or no**—The grand object of
their being led into the wilderness was that they might receive a
religious training directly under the eye of God; and the first
lesson taught them was a constant dependence on God for their daily
nourishment.

**13-31. at even the quails came up,
and covered the camp**—This bird is of the gallinaceous kind
[that is, relating to the order of heavy-bodied, largely terrestrial
birds], resembling the red partridge, but not larger than the
turtledove. They are found in certain seasons in the places through
which the Israelites passed, being migratory birds, and they were
probably brought to the camp by "a wind from the Lord" as
on another occasion ([Numbers 11:31](../../../kjv/numbers/11/31)).
**and in the morning . . . a
small round thing . . . manna**—There is a gum of the same name
distilled in this desert region from the tamarisk, which is much
prized by the natives, and preserved carefully by those who gather
it. It is collected early in the morning, melts under the heat of the
sun, and is congealed by the cold of night. In taste it is as sweet
as honey, and has been supposed by distinguished travellers, from its
whitish color, time, and place of its appearance, to be the manna on
which the Israelites were fed: so that, according to the views of
some, it was a production indigenous to the desert; according to
others, there was a miracle, which consisted, however, only in the
preternatural arrangements regarding its supply. But more recent and
accurate examination has proved this gum of the tarfa-tree to be
wanting in all the principal characteristics of the Scripture manna.
It exudes only in small quantities, and not every year; it does not
admit of being baked ([Numbers 11:8](../../../kjv/numbers/11/8))
or boiled ([Exodus 16:23](../../../kjv/exodus/16/23)). Though it
may be exhaled by the heat and afterwards fall with the dew, it is a
medicine, not food—it is well known to the natives of the desert,
while the Israelites were strangers to theirs; and in taste as well
as in the appearance of double quantity on Friday, none on Sabbath,
and in not breeding worms, it is essentially different from the manna
furnished to the Israelites.

**32-36. Fill an omer of it to be kept
for your generations**—The mere fact of such a multitude being
fed for forty years in the wilderness, where no food of any kind is
to be obtained, will show the utter impossibility of their subsisting
on a natural production of the kind and quantity as this tarfa-gum
[see on [Exodus 16:1](../../../kjv/exodus/16/1)]; and, as if
for the purpose of removing all such groundless speculations, Aaron
was commanded to put a sample of it in a pot—a golden pot ([Exodus 16:1](../../../kjv/exodus/16/1)) —to be laid before the Testimony, to be kept for future
generations, that they might see the bread on which the Lord fed
their fathers in the wilderness. But we have the bread of which that
was merely typical ([1 Corinthians 10:3](../../../kjv/1-corinthians/10/3);
[John 6:32](../../../kjv/john/6/32)).

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