Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 16-18.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

I had never before noticed, or, at least, not really thought about, that God told Moses that He was going to give the people of Israel manna in order to test whether they would walk in His law or not.  And we see that some of them failed the test.  What was the test?  The first part of the test was that God told them on the first day that they were not to keep any of the manna until the next day.  Yet, some of them did so.  Each morning, they collected as much as they needed to feed their household.  Then on the sixth day, they collected twice as much as they had on the previous days.  When this was reported to Moses, he explained that God had told them to save half of it for the seventh day, which was the Sabbath.  They were not to go out to collect any on the Sabbath, the seventh day, because there would not be any to collect.  Once again, some of them did not listen, but instead went out to gather manna and found none.  As I read this I realized it was not just a test to see if the people would follow God’s commands.  It was also training them to follow God’s commands (we will see later that the people of Israel were not very good students).  If the people did not obey God’s commands they had unpleasant, but not particularly painful, consequences.  If they kept manna overnight when He had told them not to, the next morning it had worms and stank.  If they went out on the seventh day to gather manna, they found none.  The effort of getting up and taking out what was needed to gather manna was wasted effort.  Nobody enjoys wasting effort.

There was a second training exercise which God put them through overlapping, and connected with this one I just mentioned.  God led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness, where they initially found nothing to eat.  It was only after the people began to complain that they had been brought into the wilderness to starve that God provided them with manna.  Shortly after this, but long enough for the people to have gotten into the habit of gathering manna every day, except for the seventh, God led them to Rephidim, where they did not find water to drink.  Once again, the people complained that they had been brought out of Egypt to die.  This time from thirst.  Notice how the people failed to learn from their first complaint about being led out of Israel to due?  I believe that these overlapping themes illustrate the ways in which God attempts to train us to do His will and to rely on Him.

The Israelites did not just cry out to God for food, and then later for water.  They complained that God was going to let them die.  First from hunger, then later from thirst.  Despite God having shown them His power, first by causing the Egyptians to send them forth with great treasure, then by dividing the Red Sea to allow them to escape Pharaoh’s army, they failed to trust that He would provide for their need for food and water.  And when God provided them with food, they failed to follow His instructions regarding how to collect and store that food.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.