Exodus 16:15 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Exodus 16:15
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.
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine plural construct
Israel
יִשְׂרָאֵ֗לYis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · proper noun, a place name
saw
וַיִּרְא֣וּvai.yir.'U
H7200
to see · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
said
וַיֹּ֨אמְר֜וּvai.Yo.me.Ru
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
one
אִ֤ישׁ'ish
H376
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular absolute
another
אָחִיו֙'a.Chiv
H251
a brother (used in the widest sense of literal relation… · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
manna
מָ֣ןman
H4478
literally a whatness (so to speak) · interrogative pronoun
wist
יָדְע֖וּya.de.'U
H3045
to know (properly · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
Moses
מֹשֶׁה֙mo.Sheh
H4872
Mosheh · proper noun, a man's name
said
וַיֹּ֤אמֶרvai.Yo.mer
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
bread
הַלֶּ֔חֶםha.Le.chem
H3899
food (for man or beast) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
LORD
יְהוָ֛הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
given
נָתַ֧ןna.Tan
H5414
to give · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
eat
לְאָכְלָֽהle.'okh.Lah
H402
food · preposition + noun, common feminine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Exodus 16:4 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 da…
John 6:31-32 Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
John 6:58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for…
Exodus 16:31 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…
Deuteronomy 8:3 And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he mig…
Joshua 5:12 And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but…
Nehemiah 9:15 And gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and promisedst the…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Exodus 16:13-21
Now they begin to be provided for by the immediate hand of God.
I. He makes them a feast, at night, of delicate fowl, feathered fowl (Psa 78:27), therefore not locusts, as some think; quails, or pheasants, or some wild fowl, came up, and covered the camp, so tame that they might take up as many of them as they pleased. Note, God gives us of the good things of this life, not only for necessity, but for delight, that we may not only serve him, but serve him cheerfully.
II. Next morning he rained manna upon them, which was to be continued to them for their daily bread. 1. That which was provided for them was manna, which descended from the clouds, so that, in some sense, they might be said to l…
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 (Num 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…
They said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was - This is a most unfortunate translation, because it not only gives no sense, but it contradicts itself. The Hebrew מן הוא man hu, literally signifies, What is this? for, says the text, they wist not what it was, and therefore they could not give it a name. Moses immediately answers the question, and says, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat. From Exo 16:31 we learn that this substance was afterwards called מן man, probably in commemoration of the question they had asked on its first appearance. Almost all our own ancient versions translate the words, What is this?
What this substance was we know not. It…
The Church Fathers
"This is the bread that God gave" to you "to eat." Hear who this bread is: "The word," Scripture says, "which God has ordained." This then is the ordination of God; this food nourishes the soul of the wise. It illuminates and it sweetens, resplendent with the gleam of truth and soothing, as if with a honeycomb, by the sweetness of different virtues and the word of wisdom. For "good words are sweeter than a honeycomb," as it is written in Proverbs.
Manna is interpreted as "What is this?" See whether the very power of the name does not provoke you to learn it, so that when you hear the law of God read in church you may always ask and say to the teachers: What is this? This it is that the manna indicates. Therefore if you want to eat the manna, that is, if you desire to receive the word of God, know that it is small and very fine like the seed of the coriander.
That this is heavenly food is demonstrated by the person speaking: "I shall rain upon you bread from heaven." Manna is a cause (aition),because God, who waters minds with the dew of wisdom, uses it as an instrument. And manna is a kind of matter (hyle), because souls that see it and taste it are delighted and ask whence it comes, manna which is more splendid that light and sweeter than honey. They can be answered with a chain of quotations from Scripture: "This is the bread that the Lord gave to you to eat," and "This is the Word of God which God has established" or ordained. By this bread the souls of the prudent are fed and delighted, since it is fair and sweet, illuminating the souls of the hearers with the splendor of truth and drawing them on with the sweetness of the virtues.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Exodus — The great deliverance wrought for the children of Isreal when they were brought out of the land of Egypt with “a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm” (Ex 12:51; Deut. 26:8; Ps 114; 136), about…
Manna — Heb. man-hu, “What is that?” the name given by the Israelites to the food miraculously supplied to them during their wanderings in the wilderness (Ex. 16:15-35). The name is commonly taken as derived…
Manna · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Miracles · .Manna — .Manna
Types Of Christ · Man — Man
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
And when the children of Israel saw it,.... As they could not but observe it, it being spread over the face of the wilderness; and besides, as they were told, that in the morning they should have bread to the full, they were up early to look after it:
they said one to another, it is manna; not such as is known by that name now, which is only used in medicine; nor anything that was then known by any such name; but so they called it, because it was, as Jarchi says, a preparation of food, or food ready prepared for them, from "manah", which signifies to appoint, prepare, and distribute, see Daniel 1:5, so Christ is appointed of God, and prepared in his purposes and decrees, and delivered out,…
Exodus 16:9-18
9. And Moses spoke unto Aaron, Say unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, Come near before the Lord: for he hath heard your murmurings.
9. Et dixit Moses ad Aharon, Dic ad universum coetum filiorum Israel, Accedite in conspectum Jehovae quia audivit murmurationes vestras.
10. And it came to pass, as Aaron spoke unto the whole congregation of the children of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, mid, behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
10. Et factum est quum loqueretur Aharon ad universum coetum filiorum Israel, ut respicerent versus desertum: et ecce, gloria Jehovae apparuit in nube.
11. And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying,
11.…
The same evening (according to Exo 16:12, "between the two evenings," vid., Exo 12:6) quails came up and covered the camp. עלה: to advance, applied to great armies. השּׂלו, with the article indicating the generic word, and used in a collective sense, are quails, ὀρτυγομήτρα (lxx); i.e., the quail-king, according to Hesychius ὄρτυξ ὑπερμεγέθης, and Phot. ὄρτυξ μέγας, hence a large species of quails, ὄρτυγες (Josephus), coturnices (Vulg.). Some suppose it to be the Kat or the Arabs, a kind of partridge which is found in great abundance in Arabia, Palestine, and Syria. These fly in such dense masses that the Arab boys often kill two or three at a time, by merely striking at them with…
The Hebrew man hu’ (What is it?) came to be the name of the miraculous food (“manna,” see 16:31). For forty years, the people ate what is it? Jesus referred to himself as the fulfillment of the meaning of this miracle. He was the “true bread from heaven” that gives life (John 6:32-35, 48, 51, 63).
Rashi on Exodus 16:15
מן הוא means this is something prepared for food, as in (Daniel 1:5) “And the king appointed (וימן) for them,”.
כי לא ידעו מה הוא FOR THEY KNEW NOT WHAT IS WAS so that they could call it by its name.
