Manna and Quail

Biblical Text

The account appears mainly in Exodus 16 and Numbers 11. According to Exodus 16, on the fifteenth day of the second month after leaving Egypt, the Israelites came to the Wilderness of Sin, which lies between Elim and Mount Sinai. There they murmured against Moses and Aaron because they had nothing to eat. In the evening God caused quail to cover the camp, and in the morning, after the dew had lifted, a small round substance lay on the ground like frost. The people gathered one omer per person each day. Whatever was kept until the next morning bred worms and stank. On the sixth day they gathered twice as much, and on the Sabbath no manna fell (Exodus 16:22-26). The text describes manna as "like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey" (Exodus 16:31).

In Numbers 11, the people grew weary of manna and craved meat. A wind then brought quail from the sea and let them fall around the camp. But while the meat was still between their teeth, a plague struck, and the place was named Kibroth-hattaavah ("graves of craving") (Numbers 11:31-34). Aaron placed an omer of manna in a pot and laid it up before the Testimony (Exodus 16:33-34). Manna fell throughout the forty years in the wilderness and ceased on the day after the people ate the produce of the land of Canaan (Joshua 5:12).

Terminology and Background

When the people first saw manna, they asked, "What is it?" (Hebrew man hu). The text connects this question with the name "manna" (Exodus 16:15, 31). The omer was a dry measure for grain, which the text defines as one-tenth of an ephah (Exodus 16:36). Quail are migratory birds known to pass seasonally through the Sinai Peninsula.

Significance Throughout Scripture

• Deuteronomy 8:3 explains that God gave manna so that Israel might know "that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD." Jesus quoted this verse during the temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:4).
• Psalm 78:24 calls manna "the corn of heaven."
• In John 6, after the feeding of the five thousand, when the crowd mentioned manna, Jesus called himself "the bread of life" (John 6:35). He also drew a contrast, noting that the fathers ate manna and yet died (John 6:49-50).
• Paul called manna "spiritual meat" (1 Corinthians 10:3). In 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, he quoted Exodus 16:18 to explain the principle of supplying one another's needs through giving.
• Hebrews 9:4 states that the golden pot containing manna was kept in the Ark of the Covenant, and Revelation 2:17 speaks of "the hidden manna" given to him that overcometh.

Interpretation and Debate

• Relation to natural phenomena: Some scholars associate manna with a substance formed when insect secretions harden on tamarisk trees in the Sinai region. The quail are likewise sometimes explained as migrating birds that came down from exhaustion. Interpreters in conservative denominations, by contrast, generally read the account as supernatural provision, pointing to the text's statement that manna fell daily and ceased on the Sabbath.
• John 6 and the Lord's Supper: Traditions differ on how directly this passage should be connected with the Lord's Supper. The Catholic Church reads it in close connection with the Eucharist. Within Protestantism, some interpreters relate it to the Lord's Supper, while others understand it as referring to receiving Christ by faith.
• Traditions outside the biblical text: The idea that manna tasted like whatever the eater desired appears in the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon and in later Jewish tradition. The Old Testament itself contains no such detail.