Forming Faith Blog

Gathering Enough Manna (Exodus 16)

Posted on September 23 2025 by Gregory Rawn

In the desert, the Israelites had a real worry: starvation. What they didn’t have was trust that God would provide for them. Even with their complaining, God gave them a miracle of enough.

In the arid region of the Sinai Peninsula, the Israelites could gather enough manna for their needs.
Thus Far

This marks the fifth reading in the Narrative Lectionary this year. In the first three, we encountered beginnings in the Book of Genesis: the beginning of creation, the beginning of the chosen people, and the coming-into-being of Israel. 

Last week, we entered the Book of Exodus, the story of God delivering the Israelites from Egyptian enslavement. God called Moses to lead the people and gave him God’s name: YHWH. Now, the people have escaped the Egyptians through the Red Sea, and (unbeknownst to them) are on their way to Mount Sinai and God’s gift of the Torah. But the path there isn’t smooth.

True Need

A month and a half after the people left Egypt, they had run out of food (though I’m not sure what they had eaten up to this point). I don’t know if you’ve seen the terrain in the Sinai Peninsula, but it’s pretty barren. There would certainly not be enough edible plants and animals to feed the people. Living without food leads to starvation and death. And if it actually took them 45-ish days to get where they were, not all of them would survive the travel to a place with agriculture. So, they had a true need. 

The Fleshpots of Egypt

You would think that after witnessing ten plagues, the parting of a sea, and a miracle of turning unhealthy water to healthy, the people would be more familiar with God’s power and care for them. Not to mention, there is likely a pillar of fire and cloud near them the whole time (a detail not mentioned here, but it was described as being with them for the whole exodus journey)!

Did they really think that all of those miracles and deliverances were just to kill them with starvation? For whatever reason, the Israelites did not trust that God had a plan and would take care of them. So they looked back to the last time they had plenty of food: in Egypt. I question if they truly could eat their fill (Exodus 16:3), but perhaps their Egyptian enslavers needed them to keep their energy up for their labors. 

But the people weren’t actually asking to be returned to Egypt. They wished that they had died in their enslavement rather than survive in freedom. I guess they thought that they were about to suffer and die by slow starvation, and believed that it would have been better to avoid the suffering and get it over with quickly.

Quail and Manna

In our context, it’s hard to imagine God being so unapproachable that we need a mediator to pray for us. Indeed, mediator is one of the stated roles of Jesus, but I’m not aware of a modern religion that doesn’t allow for personal prayer (and the hope that the divine would respond). But the fact that the people complained to Moses and Aaron rather than to God might have something to do with this cultural-religious understanding (though I’m sure the topic is very complex).

But, whether the people thought God would listen to them or not, God did hear them. And like an adult with a petulant child, God knew what they needed, even if they were going about “asking” for it in the wrong way. In fact, God seemed to be waiting for them to ask. Even without God’s omniscience, any leader would be aware of the logistics needed to take a large number of people through an arid, inhospitable land. God could have just provided the manna, quail, water, etc. all along the way. Moses could then have just pointed and said, “God did that for you. Isn’t that amazing?” Instead, God waited for the people to ask. They complained without hope or trust in God, but God apparently thought this was the time to graciously provide and deal with adjusting their behavior later (see another quail story in Numbers 11 for that). 

And so God provided what they needed.  

As Much as Needed

One of the aspects of the miracle of manna that intrigues me is found at the end of today’s reading:

This is what the Lord has commanded: Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer per person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.” The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.

Exodus 16:16-18

What intrigues me is that they were commanded to gather “as much of it as each of you needs” (which apparently is an omer per person). That’s great, though it’s as much as they needed, not as much as they might want. And no matter how much they gathered, they always had enough. Just enough. People who gathered too much had only what they needed, and people who gathered too little had as much as they needed.

What’s Enough?

Think of a reality in which everyone had enough, had all their needs met. And not just survival levels, but thriving levels. In the wilderness, God didn’t want the people to just survive. God wanted them to thrive: to be healthy, strong, energetic (and able to reproduce, which needs extra energy). That is a glimpse of shalom (God’s peace).

The “miracle of enough” was a miracle of justice. Justice is the work to make sure everyone has everything they need to thrive. We do not live within the miracle of enough, where the amounts are miraculously leveled. We do actually have enough (such as food production). But collectively, we perpetuate systems of injustice where some gather too much and leave many with not enough.

It is clear from elsewhere in Scripture that God commands us to work toward justice. As Christ’s representatives in our world, God can work through our hands to bring another miracle of enough.

In God’s amazing grace,

Gregory Rawn (Publisher)

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