Manna and Quails

Exodus 15:22-16:36

     After the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea on dry land, they camped for three days and ran out of water. They came to a pond in the desert called Marah.

    The people began to get angry at Moses because the water of Marah was too bitter. God showed Moses a certain kind of log to throw into the water, which made the water good to drink.

     They camped at a place called Elim, with many springs and palm trees, and they went on from there. About two months after they left Egypt, they were running out of food.

    "We wish we were back in Egypt!" the people shouted at Moses. "It would be better if God had killed us back there where we had our pots of stew and plenty of bread to eat. Out here we're slowly dying of hunger!"

     God told Moses, "I will send bread down from heaven like rain. Every day the people will gather enough to eat for that day. On the sixth day they will pick up enough for the seventh day, also. On the seventh day everyone must rest."

     So in the mornings they gathered the bread that God sent like rain. It was in flakes, like snow. The people made it into loaves, or they cooked it like cereal. They called it manna. (This sounds like the Hebrew word that means "what is it?")

     Then they began to crave other things. "Remember in Egypt when we had fresh fish and lemons and cucumbers? Remember the onions and garlic and melons? We're getting weak now, and all we have to eat is this same old manna."

     So God said, "In the morning you will eat manna, and in the evening you will eat meat." That evening a flock of birds called quails rested in the desert. The people of Israel caught them in nets and roasted them, and so they had meat.

     Moses told the people, "Now God has fed you. We will keep a jar of manna forever, so that our children and their children will remember forever that God fed us."

     The people of Israel ate manna in the desert for the whole forty years they lived there.