The Sabbath

²In the wilderness, the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. ³The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.”

⁴And the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread for you from the sky, and the people shall go out and gather each day that day’s portion—that I may thus test them, to see whether they will follow My instructions or not. ⁵But on the sixth day, when they apportion what they have brought in, it shall prove to be double the amount they gather each day.” ⁶So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “By evening you shall know it was the Lord who brought you out from the land of Egypt; ⁷and in the morning you shall behold the Presence^a of the Lord, because He has heard your grumblings against the Lord. For who are we that you should grumble against us?” [ . . . ]

¹¹The Lord spoke to Moses: ¹²“I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Speak to them and say: By evening you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; and you shall know that I the Lord am your God.”

¹³In the evening quail appeared and covered the camp; in the morning there was a fall of dew about the camp. ¹⁴When the fall of dew lifted, there, over the surface of the wilderness, lay a fine and flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. ¹⁵When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?”—for they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “That is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat. ¹⁶This is what the Lord has commanded: Gather as much of it as each of you requires to eat, an omer to a person for as many of you as there are; each of you shall fetch for those in his tent.”

¹⁷The Israelites did so, some gathering much, some little. ¹⁸But when they measured it by the omer, he who had gathered much had no excess, and he who had gathered little had no deficiency: they had gathered as much as they needed to eat. ¹⁹And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” ²⁰But they paid no attention to Moses; some of them left of it until morning, and it became infested with maggots and stank. And Moses was angry with them.

²¹So they gathered it every morning, each as much as he needed to eat; for when the sun grew hot, it would melt. ²²On the sixth day they gathered double the amount of food, two omers for each; and when all the chieftains of the community came and told Moses, ²³he said to them, “This is what the Lord meant: Tomorrow is a day of rest, a holy sabbath of the Lord. Bake what you would bake and boil what you would boil; and all that is left put aside to be kept until morning.” ²⁴So they put it aside until morning, as Moses had ordered; and it did not turn foul, and there were no maggots in it. ²⁵Then Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a sabbath of the Lord; you will not find it today on the plain. ²⁶Six days you shall gather it; on the seventh day, the sabbath, there will be none.”

²⁷Yet some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, but they found nothing. ²⁸And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you men refuse to obey My commandments and My teachings? ²⁹Mark that the Lord has given you the sabbath; therefore He gives you two days’ food on the sixth day. Let everyone remain where he is: let no one leave his place on the seventh day.” ³⁰So the people remained inactive on the seventh day.

³¹The house of Israel named it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and it tasted like wafers in honey. [ . . . ] ³⁵And the Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a settled land; they ate the manna until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.