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Manna was prepared for food by grinding and baking. It tasted like cakes made of meal and honey in its natural state, and like fresh olive oil when cooked; its shape resembled coriander seed, and its colour was white; its supply continued for forty years, and failed with their use of the first new corn in the land of Canaan. That it was altogether a miraculous gift and not a product of nature is clear from the following considerations. It fell in enormous quantity, with unfailing regularity, even in the exceptional failure of the Sabbath-day; its composition was exactly suited to the tastes of the people; heat both melted and hardened it; gathered in distrust, it bred worms and putrefied; in faith, it was preserved for generations. The natural products of the Arabian desert and other Eastern lands, called manna, fail almost in every particular noticed in the miraculous food from heaven. All serve rather medicinal than nutritious purposes. They can be gathered only three months in the year, and not all the year round, and then only in small quantities, out of all proportion to the actual consumption of the Israelites, which, calculating the omer at three English quarts (each man had an omer a day, ver. 16), could not have been less than 15,000,000 of pounds a week; they may be preserved for a long time, may be gathered on all days, indiscriminately, without a perceptible increase or diminution in their supply. The manna now found in the Arabian desert is the product of the tamarisk (Tamarix gallica), gathered in June. According to Burckhardt, "it drops from the thorns on the sticks and leaves with which the ground is covered, and must be gathered early in the day or it will be melted by the sun. The Arabs cleanse and boil it, strain it through a cloth, and put it in leather bottles; and in this way it can be kept uninjured for several years. They use it like honey or butter with their unleavened bread, but never make it into cakes or eat it by itself. It abounds only in very wet years, and in dry seasons it sometimes disappears entirely." The same traveller found in the valley of Jordan "manna like gum on the leaves and branches of the tree gharrob, which is as large as the olive-tree, having a leaf like the poplar, though somewhat broader. It appears like dew upon the leaves, is of a brown or grey colour, and drops on the ground. When first gathered it is sweet, but in a day or two becomes acid. The Arabs use it like honey or butter, and eat it in their oatmeal gruel. They also use it in cleaning their leather bottles and making them air-tight. Tim season for gathering this is in May or June. Two other shrubs which have been supposed to yield the manna of Scripture are the Alhagi maurorum, or Persian manna, and the Alhagi desertorum, thorny plants common in Syria." In addition to what has been said of the miraculous nature of the manna supply and the character of the natural products just specified, a brief reference to three explanations of the manna may be in place.

1. It is said to be miraculous food, that is, dew changed into bread. "The dew of heaven" promotes the fertility of the earth. During the wanderings of Israel through the wilderness, which is "no place of seed," the dew, without sowing, brought bread from heaven (ver. 4; Psalm 78:24; Psalm 105:40). So that the manna answers to the wine at the marriage of Cana.

2. The manna is the same food of the. desert still found in the peninsula of Sinai. This, of course, lands us in the region of mythical embellishment, and requires a degree of credulity which the writer does not possess.

3. The manna is a miracle of accretion, answering to the miraculous feeding of the multitude in the New Testament, and to the increase of meal and oil by Elijah in the Old.

(J. I. Mombert, D. D.)

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KJV: 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.

WEB: It happened at evening that quail came up and covered the camp; and in the morning the dew lay around the camp.