--- title: "Exodus 16 - Study King James Bible with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary" description: "Read Exodus 16 with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary commentary. 1 And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sin" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16" --- [ Read](/kjv/exodus/16)[ Commentary](/study/exodus/16)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/exodus/16) Audio 1 And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which *is* between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. 2 And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness: 3 And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, *and* when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger. 4 ¶ Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.* 5 And it shall come to pass, that on the sixth day they shall prepare *that* which they bring in; and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. 6 And Moses and Aaron said unto all the children of Israel, At even, then ye shall know that the LORD hath brought you out from the land of Egypt: 7 And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the LORD; for that he heareth your murmurings against the LORD: and what *are* we, that ye murmur against us? 8 And Moses said, *This shall be*, when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full; for that the LORD heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against him: and what *are* we? your murmurings *are* not against us, but against the LORD. 9 ¶ And Moses spake unto Aaron, Say unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, Come near before the LORD: for he hath heard your murmurings. 10 And it came to pass, as Aaron spake unto the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and, behold, the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud. 11 ¶ And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 12 I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I *am* the LORD your God. 13 And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. 14 And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness *there lay* a small round thing, *as* small as the hoar frost on the ground. 15 And when the children of Israel saw *it*, they said one to another, It *is* manna: for they wist not what it *was*. And Moses said unto them, This *is* the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.* 16 ¶ This *is* the thing which the LORD hath commanded, Gather of it every man according to his eating, an omer for every man, *according to* the number of your persons; take ye every man for *them* which *are* in his tents.** 17 And the children of Israel did so, and gathered, some more, some less. 18 And when they did mete *it* with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating. 19 And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning. 20 Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank: and Moses was wroth with them. 21 And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted. 22 ¶ And it came to pass, *that* on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one *man:* and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. 23 And he said unto them, This *is that* which the LORD hath said, To morrow *is* the rest of the holy sabbath unto the LORD: bake *that* which ye will bake *to day*, and seethe that ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept until the morning. 24 And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. 25 And Moses said, Eat that to day; for to day *is* a sabbath unto the LORD: to day ye shall not find it in the field. 26 Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, *which is* the sabbath, in it there shall be none. 27 ¶ And it came to pass, *that* there went out *some* of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. 28 And the LORD said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See, for that the LORD hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. 30 So the people rested on the seventh day. 31 And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it *was* like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it *was* like wafers *made* with honey. 32 ¶ And Moses said, This *is* the thing which the LORD commandeth, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt. 33 And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept for your generations. 34 As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept. 35 And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan. 36 Now an omer *is* the tenth *part* of an ephah. [Exodus 15](/study/exodus/15) [Exodus 17](/study/exodus/17) ## Commentary To verse 1 Quails and Manna in the Desert of Sin. - [Exodus 16:1](/kjv/exodus/16/1). From Elim the congregation of Israel proceeded into the desert of Sin. According to [Numbers 33:10](/kjv/numbers/33/10), they encamped at the Red Sea between Elim and the desert of Sin; but this is passed over here, as nothing of importance happened there. Judging from the nature of the ground, the place of encampment *at the Red Sea* is to be found at the mouth of the Wady *Taiyibeh*. For the direct road from the W. Gharandel to Sinai, and the only practicable one for caravans, goes over the tableland between this wady and the Wady *Useit* to the upper end of the W. Taiyibeh, a beautiful valley, covered with tamarisks and shrubs, where good water may be found by digging, and which winds about between steep rocks, and opens to the sea at *Ras Zelimeh*. To the north of this the hills and rocks come close to the sea, but to the south they recede, and leave a sandy plain with numerous shrubs, which is bounded on the east by wild and rugged rocky formations, and stretches for three miles along the shore, furnishing quite space enough therefore for the Israelitish camp. It is about eight hours' journey from Wady Gharandel, so that by a forced march the Israelites might have accomplished it in one day. From this point they went “to the *desert of Sin,* which is between Elim and Sinai.” The place of encampment here is doubtful. There are two roads that lead from W. Taiyibeh to Sinai: the lower, which enters the desert plain by the sea at the *Murkha* or *Morcha* well, not far from the mouth of the Wady *eth Thafary*, and from which you can either go as far as *Tr* by the sea-coast, and then proceed in a north-easterly direction to Sinai, or take a more direct road through Wady *Shellגl* and *Badireh* into Wady *Mukatteb* and *Feirגn*, and so on to the mountains of Horeb; and the *upper road*, first pointed out by *Burckhardt* and Robinson, which lies in a S.E. direction from W. Taiyibeh through W. *Shubeikeh*, across en elevated plain, then through Wady *Humr* to the broad sandy plain of *el Debbe* or *Debbet en Nasb*, thence through Wady *Nasb* to the plain of *Debbet er Ramleh*, which stretches far away to the east, and so on across the Wadys *Chamile* and *Seich* in almost a straight line to Horeb. One of these two roads the Israelites must have taken. The majority of modern writers have decided in favour of the lower road, and place the desert of Sin in the broad desert plain, which commences at the foot of the mountain that bounds the Wady Taiyibeh towards the south, and stretches along the sea-coast to *Ras Muhammed*, the southernmost point of the peninsula, the southern part of which is now called *el Kגa*. The encampment of the Israelites in the desert of *Sin* is then supposed to have been in the northern part of this desert plain, where the well *Murkha* still furnishes a resting-place plentifully supplied with drinkable water. *Ewald* has thus represented the Israelites as following the desert of *el Kגa* to the neighbourhood of *Tr*, and then going in a north-easterly direction to Sinai. But apart from the fact that the distance is too great for the three places of encampment mentioned in [Numbers 33:12-14](/kjv/numbers/33/12-14), and a whole nation could not possibly reach Rephidim in three stages by this route, it does not tally with the statement in [Numbers 33:12](/kjv/numbers/33/12), that the Israelites left the desert of Sin and went to *Dofkah*; so that *Dofkah* and the places that follow were not in the desert of Sin at all. For these and other reasons, *De Laborde, v. Raumer*, and others suppose the Israelites to have gone from the fountain of *Murkha* to Sinai by the road which enters the mountains not far from this fountain through Wady Shellגl, and so continues through Wady Mukatteb to Wady Ferגn (Robinson, i. p. 105). But this view is hardly reconcilable with the encampment of the Israelites “in the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai.” For instance, the direct road from W. Gharandel (Elim) to Sinai does not touch the desert plain of *el Kגa* at all, but turns away from it towards the north-east, so that it is difficult to understand how this desert could be said to lie between Elim and Sinai. For this reason, even *Kurtz* does not regard the clause “which is between Elim and Sinai” as pointing out the situation of the desert itself, but (contrary to the natural sense of the words) as a more exact definition of that part or point of the desert of Sin at which the road from Elim to Sinai crosses it. But nothing is gained by this explanation. There is no road from the place of encampment by the Red Sea in the Wady Taiyibeh by which a whole nation could pass along the coast to the upper end of this desert, so as to allow the Israelites to cross the desert on the way from Taiyibeh to the W. Shellגl. As the mountains to the south of the W. Taiyibeh come so close to the sea again, that it is only at low water that a narrow passage is left (*Burckhardt*, p. 985), the Israelites would have been obliged to turn eastwards from the encampment by the Red Sea, to which they had no doubt gone for the sake of the water, and to go all round the mountain to get to the Murkha spring. This spring (according to *Burckhardt*, p. 983), “a small lake in the sandstone rock, close at the foot of the mountain”) is “the principal station on this road,” next to Ayun Musa and Gharandel; but the water is “of the worst description, partly from the moss, the bog, and the dirt with which the well is filled, but chiefly no doubt from the salt of the soil by which it is surrounded,” and men can hardly drink it; whereas in the Wady *Thafary*, a mile (? five English miles) to the north-east of Murkha, there is a spring that “yields the only sweet water between Tor and Suez” (p. 982). Now, even if we were to assume that the Israelites pitched their camp, not by this, the only sweet water in the neighbourhood, but by the bad water of Murkha, the Murkah spring is not situated in the desert of *el Kגa*, but only on the eastern border of it; so that if they proceeded thence into the Wady Shellגl, and so on to the Wady Feirגn, they would not have crossed the desert at all. In addition to this, although the lower road through the valley of Mukatteb is described by *Burckhardt* as “much easier and more frequented,” and by Robinson as “easier” than the upper road across Nasseb (Nasb), there are two places in which it runs through very narrow defiles, by which a large body of people like the Israelites could not possibly have forced their way through to Sinai. From the Murkha spring, the way into the valley of Mukatteb is through “a wild mountain road,” which is shut out from the eyes of the wanderer by precipitous rocks. “We got off our dromedaries,” says *Dieterici*, ii. p. 27, “and left them to their own instinct and sure tread to climb the dangerous pass. We looked back once more at the desolate road which we had threaded between the rocks, and saw our dromedaries, the only signs of life, following a serpentine path, and so climbing the pass in this rocky theatre Nakb el Butera.” *Strauss* speaks of this road in the following terms: “We went eastwards through a large plain, overgrown with shrubs of all kinds, and reached a narrow pass, only broad enough for one camel to go through, so that our caravan emerged in a very pictorial serpentine fashion. The wild rocks frowned terribly on every side.” Moreover, it is only through a “terribly wild pass” that you can descend from the valley Mukatteb into the glorious valley of Feiran (*Strauss*, p. 128). (Note: This pass is also mentioned by *Graul* (Reise ii. p. 226) as “a wild romantic mountain pass,” and he writes respecting it, “For five minutes the road down was so narrow and steep, that the camels stept in fear, and we ourselves preferred to follow on foot. If the Israelites came up here on their way from the sea at Ras Zelime, the immense procession must certainly have taken a long time to get through the narrow gateway.” To this we may add, that if Moses had led the people to Sinai through one of these narrow passes, they could not possibly have reached Sinai in a month from the desert of Sin, to say nothing of eight days, which was all that was left for them, if, as is generally supposed, and as *Kurtz* maintains, their stay at the place of encampment in the desert of Sin, where they arrived on the 15th day of the second month ([Exodus 16:1](/kjv/exodus/16/1)), lasted full seven days, and their arrival at Sinai took place on the first day of the third month. For if a pass is so narrow that only one camel can pass, not more than three men could walk abreast. Now if the people of Israel, consisting of two millions of men, had gone through such a pass, it would have taken at least twenty days for them all to pass through, as an army of 100,000 men, arranged three abreast, would reach 27 English miles; so that, supposing the pass to be not more than five minutes walk long, 100,000 Israelites would hardly go through in a day, to say nothing at all about their flocks and herds.) For these reasons we must adopt *Knobel's* conclusions, and seek the desert of Sin in the upper road which leads from Gharandel to Sinai, viz., in the broad sandy table-land *el Debbe* or *Debbet er Ramle*, which stretches from the Tih mountains over almost the whole of the peninsula from N.W. to S.E. (vid., Robinson, i. 112), and in its south-eastern part touches the northern walls of the Horeb or Sinai range, which helps to explain the connection between the names *Sin* and *Sinai*, though the meaning “thorn-covered” is not established, but is merely founded upon the idea that סין has the same meaning as סנה . This desert table-land, which is essentially distinguished from the limestone formations of the Tih mountains, and the granite mass of Horeb, by its soil of sand and sandstone, stretches as far as Jebel *Humr* to the north-west, and the Wady *Khamile* and *Barak* to the south-west (vid., Robinson, i. p. 101, 102). Now, if this sandy table-land is to be regarded as the desert of *Sin*, we must look for the place of Israel's encampment somewhere in this desert, most probably in the north-western portion, in a straight line between Elim (Gharandel) and Sinai, possibly in Wady *Nasb*, where there is a well surrounded by palm-trees about six miles to the north-west of *Sarbut* *el Khadim*, with a plentiful supply of excellent water, which Robinson says was better than he had found anywhere since leaving the Nile (i. 110). The distance from W. Taiyibeh to this spot is not greater than that from Gharandel to Taiyibeh, and might therefore be accomplished in a hard day's march. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com","name":"Real Bible Believers","description":"RBB","publisher":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/search?q={search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","width":672,"height":448,"caption":"Real Bible Believers"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16","name":"Exodus 16 - Study King James Bible with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16#primaryimage"},"author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Read Exodus 16 with keil and delitzsch old testament commentary commentary. 1 And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sin","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","name":"Home"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","name":"Study Bible"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary","name":"keil and delitzsch old testament commentary"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus","name":"Exodus"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":5,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/keil-and-delitzsch-old-testament-commentary/exodus/16","name":"16"}}]},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","width":512,"height":512},"logo":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo"},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/RBiblebeliever","https://www.facebook.com/RBibleBelievers"]}]} ```