Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 16-18.
So, one of the objections raised by historians to the idea that the Exodus actually happened is that the Sinai peninsula could not support the number of people which the book of Exodus attributes to the Israelites leaving Egypt. This objection only carries any weight if you do not believe that God performs miracles. On the other hand, of one does believe that God performs miracles, then this account explains how the large number of people whom the book of Exodus says left Egypt were able to survive during the time when it says they spent in the wilderness. While I have seen an attempt to attribute the description of manna to a natural phenomena, the description here contains some key things which cannot be explained by any natural phenomena. First, the passage tells us that those who gathered a lot and those who gathered a little neither had too little nor too much. The implied point being that those who gathered for a large family, or group, and those who gathered for a small family, or group, gathered enough for there to be one “omer” per person for whom they were gathering (I put omer in quotes because we do not know how much an omer was, just that it was a unit of measure). More importantly, we are told that for five days, if someone kept any over to the following morning it would go bad, but on the sixth day, not only were they able to collect twice as much as normal, it would keep into the seventh day. And, if they went out on the seventh day to gather manna, there was none to be found. No naturally occurring foodstuff behaves in that manner.
We need to keep in mind as we read through the book of Exodus that the Israelites had daily (or, at least, weekly) reminders of God’s power and care for them. Yet, they still rebelled against Him on multiple occasions. Now before we get too judgmental about them, we should think about how much He has blessed us, and yet we too sin against Him.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.