The Origin of Manna

Click here to read Exodus 16.

The Israelites left the city of Elim and went to the Wilderness of Sin. It had been 15 days since they left Goshen in Egypt, a distance of about 150 miles. They got hungry. They even longed for Egypt where they boiled Lamb and ate bread until they were full. It would have been better, so they thought, to have died in Egypt with a full stomach than to strive out there in the wilderness.
Well, the Lord heard their complaining, and He told Moses that He would "rain" bread from heaven. Moses told the people that the Lord had heard their cries and was going to provide for them.
Notice what He was going to do:

In the evening, quails would be provided for meat.
In the morning, bread would be provided like dew. They would each gather enough for that day, and no more. An "omer" (4 U.S. dry pints) was the amount each was to gather.
On the sixth day, they would gather enough for 2 days.
On the seventh day, they were not to gather because it was the Sabbath. Some went out to look, and there was none.

The people called the bread "manna". It was white like coriander seed which was a small spicy seed used for seasoning and believed to have some medicinal value, and it tasted like wafers made with honey. The Lord commanded Aaron to take jar and put an "omer" of manna in it and keep it for future generations. Aaron took it and placed it before the "Testimony", a sacred place. It would be placed in the Holy of Holies when the Tabernacle was built. They ate manna for 40 years until they came to the border of the Promise Land.

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